Acquired Perfection Syndrome
by Izaranna
Summary: After death, everyone is perfect. They, James Potter and Lily Evans, were perfect even before that. Well, as perfect as two 'sensible' children-turned-adults can be anyway. Harry made a wish and magic, being as fickle as ever, decided to grant it. The wizarding world will never be the same again. Deviation from canon in OoTP - Chapter 3, Advanced Guard. No Character Bashing.
1. Prologue

**Acquired Perfection Syndrome**

 **WARNING: If you want the plot to flow exactly as it did in canon, don't read further. I have a habit of being incapable of doing that.**

* * *

Number four Privet Drive was about as far from abnormal as you could possibly get. A resident of this cookie-cutter house was about as far from normal as you could possibly get.

Harry Potter was said to be many things, chief among them being an attention-seeking liar with a penchant for mischief, but what many did not know was that he was magical. Alright, all of the wizarding population did, but they hardly counted. At least, not at Number four Privet Drive.

Petunia Dursley, as she got into the passenger seat of the car, next to her husband (bless his heart, he was so good to her and her Duddikins. Couldn't have picked a better man to spend her life with if she tried!), spared a very fleeting thought for her nephew and the violent nightmares he'd been having, before promptly squashing any burgeoning sentiment.

It wasn't, after all, _her_ fault that he was a freak.

The Dursley family, consisting of Vernon, Petunia and Dudley Dursley, drove to the prize-giving ceremony of the All-England Best-Kept Suburban Lawn Competition, where they would find that they'd been tricked—by the _abnormalities_ they had the misfortune of knowing.

Meanwhile, Harry was equal parts fuming at the injustice of being kept in the dark while his _right to Magic_ was being stripped away, and gazing forlornly at the ceiling and wondering why on earth he even bothered to care.

It was at this precipice that he was teetering at that he thought, _Well, if no one tells me anything, I'll have to find out myself._ However, being a fifteen year old teenager with far too much sincerity to be even a passable liar, he was hard-pressed to accomplish this. He then thought, _I wish someone would. It's not like I can't be trusted. I've faced Voldemort_ twice _. Thrice if you count Hallowe'en. He's after me, and I have no clue what's going on!_

His thoughts eventually turned to his godfather, Sirius Black. Sirius, Harry felt, would have been the most likely person to tell him things, seeing as how, of all the adults Harry knew, Sirius was the only one to treat him like an adult. However on that front, at least this summer, Sirius had disappointed him. _I wonder if my parents would have treated me like an adult…_

Two thoughts merged, the sky grew dimmer, the Advanced Guard arrived at Number four Privet Drive, and two corpses had new life breathed into them.

The world would never be the same again.

* * *

 **It's short, but it'll get longer, I promise. I hope I got Harry as in character as possible, and that I don't make any of the characters too OOC. With regards to Lily and James, they'll be different from most mainstream interpretations, but not, I hope, too left field. Fair warning, I live in England, so I may or may not use colloquial terms. This story _will_ see change in characters' psyche, which shouldn't be too much of a surprise considering AN ORPHANS' PARENTS COME BACK TO LIFE. **

**Please read and review!**


	2. Like the Crack of a Gun

**Chapter 1: Like the Crack of a Gun**

* * *

Tonks, Harry felt, was quite cool. Her hair were a short spiky mess of pink, her heart-shaped face relaxed and kind and her eyes laughing. As she tried valiantly to get her wand to fold his socks after packing all his stuff (although he wondered why anyone would need their socks folded at all), Harry marvelled at her metamorphmagus abilities, and the fact that she was an auror.

"Wand still in your jeans? Both buttocks still on? Okay, let's go. _Locomotor Trunk._ " Tonks said, waving her wand.

Harry's trunk rose a few inches into the air. Holding her wand like a conductor's baton, Tonks made it hover across the room and out of the door ahead of them, Hedwig's cage in her left hand. Harry followed her down the stairs carrying his broomstick.

It was at this precise moment that a loud CRACK reverberated around the house, like the sound of a gun, the same sound Harry had heard a few days ago that Uncle Vernon had blamed him for. As he got back to the kitchen, he saw everyone standing completely still, wands pointed at the door. Harry decided that the sound must have meant something to them, but before he could ask, Lupin caught his attention and motioned for him to be silent.

He could hear voices now, out on the street. Taking his own wand out, Harry quietly moved towards Lupin as Tonks put down Hedwig's birdcage and shot a questioning glance at Mad-Eye.

"Who do you think it is?" whispered someone that Harry was fairly certain was Hestia Jones.

"We're not going to stick around to find out." said Moody. Just as he was about to move, the doorbell rang.

In the quiet of the evening, the chiming noise of the bell sounded ominous, like funeral bells.

Lupin and Shacklebolt exchanged a glance and then, as one, the entire Advanced Guard moved towards the door. The elderly man that Harry thought was Elphias Doge quietly said, "Be ready to fly as soon as Remus blasts open the door Harry."

Before he could properly register what had been said, the rest of them had mounted their brooms and had shoved him just behind Tonks.

Moody held out his fingers and silently counted to three.

The doorbell rang again; Lupin opened the door and shot two red spells in quick succession at the intruders. Moody yelled at them to FLY! and they took off, flying through the door and out into the sky.

First Lupin, then Shacklebolt, then Tonks and then him, with Moody following closely behind. He barely caught a glimpse of the Death Eaters, but he thought there were two of them, one with bright red hair and the other with a pair of glasses.

He felt one of them brush their hand against his shirt, but before they could grab a hold of him, Moody shot a stinging hex at them, shouting at Harry to go faster.

Not needing to be told twice, Harry flew like he'd never flown before, leaving behind two very confused people.

* * *

Precisely at the moment Tonks was telling Harry of her ineptitude with household spells, Lily and James Potter were falling.

Not in love, not into despair, but simply falling from a great height, threatening to crash onto the ground. Considering the last thing either one of them remembered was Voldemort bursting into their should-have-been-hidden-but-clearly-wasn't abode, they can perhaps be forgiven for not reacting to this in the most sensible of manners.

With their eyes open and hands firmly clutching wands that they vaguely remembered not having held when protecting their baby, Lily and James Potter apparated to the ground that they were currently plummeting to.

They could have, they would later suppose, apparated to familiar territory, or perhaps screamed their heads off when they realised they were falling, with no recollection of how they came about to be in that state, but they were not very normal.

In fact, they would hazard a guess and say that they were the furthest from normal that the world had ever known. In retrospect, Harry's oddness and devil-may-care attitude were a given. And to think, the place that they had apparated to happened to be the _most_ normal place in England.

It wasn't _just_ exaggeration either, for you see, there was only one small magical dwelling near Privet Drive, and it was more than eighty miles away. When Lily and James blinked at the perfectly aligned houses and perfectly kept lawns, they didn't know what to think.

But they hadn't been hailed as one of the best witches and wizards of their generation for nothing—they ignored the strangeness completely and began talking in hushed voices.

"Where are we?" said Lily, a red-haired woman of a bit above average height and sparkling green eyes.

James, her husband, ran a hand through his messy jet black hair and adjusted his glasses. "I don't know, but this place looks strangely familiar…"

"How so?" Lily asked, when it was clear that James wasn't going to say anything.

Knowing that his wife would believe him no matter how ludicrous his statement might be, James refrained from telling her that the only way he could possibly know this neighbourhood was through her, and _that_ opened a distinctly unpleasant can of worms (of the Annoying-in-laws variety).

"It's definitely muggle." he said.

Lily pursed her lips, as if she could read his mind and knew he was hiding something from her. "You don't say!" she said sarcastically. James simply grinned at her unrepentantly.

After walking forward a little bit, Lily said, "Well, it's fairly late, but someone must be awake. Shall we try one of these houses? See if anyone can tell us where we are?"

James nodded. "Pick a house."

"Oh goody, so many diverse choices! Shall I pick the one with the white front door? Or _that_ one, the one with the even whiter front door?" said Lily gleefully. James just laughed and headed towards the house closest to them.

Now, any sensible person would have been worried about what happened to them, how they got there when they couldn't remember how, or perhaps even nervous about being alone on a completely foreign street in a completely foreign town. However, Lily and James were of the sort that shoved all problems to the side and made the most out of every situation. No use stressing, they thought, if you could get on just as well without.

Lily knocked on the door, the brass plaque informing them that it was the fourth house on the street. It was quiet for a little bit, and then she rang the doorbell, thinking that perhaps the residents were asleep.

Meanwhile, James was overcome with a very familiar sense of déjà vu. Where, he thought, had he seen this house before? Number four…

"Perhaps no one's home?" Lily asked.

"Try again." said James, hoping that someone was in so that he could put a face to the vague images he had in his head.

James never forgot a face. It was why Lily trusted him completely when he said he remembered something; Merlin knew her memory was one of the worst in their year.

She rang it again, and this time they heard movements from inside. Something in their stances tensed, as though they knew something sinister was afoot.

The minute the door burst open and a stunning hex was flung at them, James prepped a tracking spell as Lily cast a shield charm. It had become a sort of habit, after nearly four years of ambushes, ambushing, tussles and fierce battles against the dark side.

He managed to grab one of their shirts and attach the tracking charm onto them before all—James had to count them in his head—ten of the flying blurs flew out of his grasp. Instead of giving chase, Lily and James just stood there, waiting to see if anyone else would burst out of Number Four.

After a few moments, they looked at each other and shrugged, walking to the next house over as though nothing out of the ordinary had happened at all—they'd bring it up during the next Order meeting, but that wasn't happening until Monday, so they filed the encounter away for later.

This time, Lily rang the doorbell and stood back a little bit. She wasn't going to take any chances with Number Six.

An elderly lady with a stern face and sleep-deprived eyes glared at their presence. "What do you want at this time of night?" she snapped.

Lily smiled politely. "Excuse me miss, we're very sorry to bother you so late. Only, my husband and I've been driving around in circles for the last half hour, and I do believe we're quite lost. If you could just tell us where we are, we'll leave you to get back to bed."

She grumbled under her breath—something about bloody teenagers and joyrides at midnight—before snapping, "You're in Little Whinging."

"Where?" asked James.

Her face darkened further. "Little Whinging, Surrey. Are you drunk?"

But both James and Lily had stopped listening, Lily because even she felt that that address had significance and James because he knew exactly where they were.

"Not at all miss. Also, what day is it?" asked James, because he'd noticed the lack of Hallowe'en decorations and wondered if perhaps they'd missed a day in whatever it was that got them here.

Looking at them strangely, she said "August the second." She promptly shut the door in their face, muttering about drunk good-for-nothings.

"How rude!" Lily said, appalled by the woman's behaviour.

"Forget that. Last I checked, it was October the 31st. What are we, back in time?"

As they both paused to wonder at the ridiculousness of that assertion, James voiced his other epiphany.

"Number four Privet Drive ring any bells?" he asked his wife.

Lily suddenly stilled.

"Petunia!" she said.

James nodded grimly. "But," she began worriedly, "what would Death Eaters be doing here? You don't think—"

"Impossible." said James firmly. They had gone to such great lengths to ensure that the Dursley family could _never_ be associated with the Potters that it would take prophecies, Hagrid's umbrella and Dumbledore's guilt combined for Magic to even _touch_ Petunia Dursley's family.

Which, James reminded himself, could have very conceivably happened.

"Harry." whispered Lily.

Both their eyes widened and, glancing at each other in mutual understanding, they ran as fast as they could to the slightly ajar door of Number Four.

The house was dark, the only light seeming to be coming from, as they found out when they began frantically exploring, the kitchen. Spotless, immaculate and clinical were some of the words James would use to describe the Dursley household, for indeed it was—there were several pictures of them to prove it (not that he needed the affirmation of course. His memory was one thing that he could always rely on.)

Not a single picture however, of a green-eyed boy with messy hair. But what both the twenty one year olds noticed was that, with each picture they came across, Dudley Dursley, Lily's nephew who was only a few months older than Harry, kept on growing. In fact, there were several framed certificates for rugby and boxing (though most of them were for participation only) that seemed to fancy that it was 1995. Or at least, that seemed to be the latest date that they could find.

"What's going on James?" asked Lily, trying to keep the fear out of her voice. It wasn't every day that you went from 1981 to 1995 after all.

James, on the other hand, shrugged off his perplexity and simply embraced the fact that he had missed fourteen years of the calendar. After all, stranger things had happened in the magical world (time-turners and accurate palmistry came to mind). What was one more impossibility?

"I do believe, love, that we're standing in Petunia's immaculate foyer and rightly besmirching it with our freakish presence." said James, with a very severe expression on his face.

Lily felt better knowing that James didn't seem to find their mess of a life too crazy—it would be alright now. "Come now James, one might assume you actually felt it to be a crime."

"Of course. Petunia's OCD must be accommodated. I couldn't bear to cause her undue distress." he replied gravely.

They both gave into their twitching lips and snickered before heading upstairs.

Looking into the bedrooms, uncaring about their very blatant 'breaking and entering', James once again marvelled at the colour choice—salmon pink had always been his sister-in-law's favourite. They finally happened upon a door (that had a suspicious cat flap) that they instantly knew was different.

Magical, they would go so far as to say.

Lily knew immediately that her baby had been here—she'd recognise Harry's scent anywhere. Sirius had called her a dog when she'd mentioned her sense of smell, and James had promptly said that she'd fit right in with the motley crew of illegal animagi. But this was different—this was probably one of those mother things.

James did not have such powers unfortunately, so he had to rely on his deductive reasoning. Luckily, dealing with Peter's and Sirius' pointed, sceptical, obnoxious and/or idiotic questions and observations had honed James' skill to an art form.

The room was shabby, but clean enough that it looked recently lived in. There were books on the shelf and it was to these that James turned his attentions to, ignoring the lumpy bed and broken-repaired clock on the side-table. It was amazing how much you could tell about someone by looking at the titles of the books they kept.

" _Quidditch through the Ages, The Standard Book of Spells (grade 4), A Beginner's Guide to Transfiguration…"_ read James. "Lily, I think this is Harry's room."

"I know." she said, sitting heavily on the bed.

They'd spent nearly an hour looking through the house, and she was tired. The adrenaline was wearing off and Lily let it sink in that Voldemort had invaded her home, (presumably) taken her baby, it was _**1995**_ , her baby was living with the _Dursleys_ (they'd never seen eye-to-eye when it came to magic and she didn't for one second believe that that would have changed in fourteen years) and there were no pictures of him in this ridiculously clean house.

"The mattress is lumpy." she said, trying to find _anything_ else to focus on.

"There are wards on this house." said James, after muttering a few spells under his breath.

"This clock needs fixing." said Lily.

"No Death Eater would be able to get in."

"All the toys are broken…"

"Lily!" yelled James, having a eureka moment.

Snapping out of it, Lily looked at him with full concentration.

"Harry was with the people that flew away!" he said excitedly.

Lily just looked at him blankly, before catching his train of thought. Giving into her burgeoning desire, Lily verbalised what was on both their minds:

"Bloody hell."

"Exactly. I put a tracker on one of them. We can find them." James began pacing, an excessively complex idea forming in his head, little details piecing together to create a really convoluted whole.

Silently casting a spell with his wand tucked away in his pocket (wandless and wordless magic was one of the things James had spent ages trying to master, seeing as he had had nearly an entire year in hiding with little else but nappy changes and a sleeping Harry to occupy him), he honed in to where the charm informed him his target was.

"I know that place, but I cannot for the life of me figure out how." said James, almost to himself.

Grabbing Lily's hand (and squeezing it reassuringly because he knew she was on the verge of a well-deserved breakdown), he headed out the door and outside the boundary of Number Four Privet Drive, before disappearing with a 'pop'.

* * *

 **Well, I hope you liked James and Lily's introductions. And, I hope I made it believable.**

 **DISCLAIMER: Some lines are taken/directly modified from the original _Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix_. I do not own it.**


	3. Reaching the Supposed Destination

**Chapter 2: Reaching the Supposed Destination**

* * *

 _The headquarters of the Order of the Phoenix may be found at number twelve, Grimmauld Place, London._

As the message curled into flames and floated to the ground, Harry looked around at the houses again, vaguely wondering whether Moody had pyromaniac tendencies.

Number eleven, number thirteen, then thinking about the message hard when Lupin urged him to, a number twelve _grew_ into view (there was no better way to describe it.)

After stepping into the dark and depressing house, being hurriedly shoved into a room by Mrs Weasley, yelling at Ron and Hermione, Fred and George's appearance, the talk about the Order of the Phoenix, Percy's prattishness and finishing nicely with the pettiness of the Daily Prophet, Harry was a bit, what some might call, incensed.

"I didn't ask — I didn't want — Voldemort killed my parents!" Harry spluttered. "I got famous because he murdered my family but couldn't kill me! Who wants to be famous for that? Don't they think I'd rather it'd never —"

"We know, Harry," said Ginny earnestly.

Hermione opened her mouth to say something else, but a dull crack sounded, the same one that Harry had heard at Privet Drive when the two Death Eaters had arrived.

"It's that noise again."

"Apparition." chorused Fred and George grimly.

"What do you mean 'again'?" asked Ron.

He began heading downstairs and, before he could ask them where he could find a window to see the front of the house, Ginny motioned for him to follow her.

The adults from the meeting that the Weasleys had tried to listen in on were already coming out, exchanging worried glances. Amidst all of them was Sirius, and Harry felt a great joy in seeing his godfather again after so long, although the month of silence had left a slightly bitter taste in his mouth.

Hurriedly recounting what had happened as he was leaving Privet Drive to his small audience, everyone peered out at the barren street, where two shadowed figures were talking indistinctly.

Fred and George disappeared with a crack and then reappeared after a few seconds, holding a strange device that looked like a megaphone in their hands.

"Argument Amplifiers." they whispered. "Let's you hear things from at least forty feet away. We're still working on the range they work at."

Mrs Weasley looked disapproving, but Mad-Eye barked at them to 'use the ruddy things.'

They happily obliged.

As though they were standing right next to him, Harry heard the Death Eaters' voices. One was female (with a really soothing quality to her voice) and the other was male (but it wasn't too deep). They both sounded fairly young.

"—knew that." said the man.

"But then what? You said the tracking charm wore off here, then you—" said the female.

"Look, it's never happened before, so there's bound to be something that washed away the spell. Either that or they somehow discovered the charm and took it off, which, as you pointed out, is very unlikely." explained the man in a conversational way.

"Thief's Downfall?" asked the female after a moment of silence.

"We're not at Gringotts love. It doesn't work like that." said the man in an affectionate manner.

This confused Harry. They sounded—almost normal. But they were Death Eaters, they'd said they'd put a tracking charm on one of them (and suddenly he remembered one of them grabbing his shirt, but he shook the thought off. He'd have to ask Hermione later whether it was possible to cast a spell on someone solely through touch).

"Maybe wherever they are is unplottable?" said the female.

"That…might be the case actually. Fidelius charm could be it as well, which would explain why I know that I know this place, but I still don't know it." said the man.

"Now that that's sorted, how are we going to find Harry?" asked the female. A cold feeling of dread went down Harry's spine.

They were looking for him. Ron and Hermione exchanged a glance and looked at him worriedly.

"Don't worry Harry." said Sirius quietly from next to him. Harry started a bit, but Sirius placed a hand on his shoulder. "This place is both unplottable _and_ under the Fidelius. They can't find you here."

Feeling more reassured, Harry went back to listening, although he was sure he'd missed a bit because the conversation made very little sense.

"—the boots."

"Yeah, because that's _exactly_ what Padfoot wanted for Christmas." said the man sarcastically.

The inhabitants of number twelve Grimmauld place took a sharp breath and looked at Sirius with apprehension.

"How do they know?" whispered Hermione worriedly.

"Wormtail." said Ron, and Harry knew it was the only possibility but somehow, he didn't think it was right. The man had said it too casually, like as if he'd said it for years before. Wormtail had been Scabbers not too long ago, and he was the only one that could have told the Death Eaters about the nickname.

Though _why_ he would was up for debate.

Sirius concentrated on the two figures almost feverishly.

"Who wouldn't? At least Remie liked it." sniffed the woman haughtily.

"You got him a book about knitting." the man deadpanned.

"Best book he ever got, I'm sure."

Lupin choked a sob, and Sirius inhaled sharply. Snape looked at them as though they'd lost their marbles, but that was hardly anything new.

"Remus, are you alright?" asked Tonks gently.

He nodded jerkily. "Lily got me a book about knitting the Christmas before—" he couldn't go on, but he didn't need to.

Hermione shot Ron and Harry a questioning look, but neither had any clue how to explain what was going on.

"Lily Potter?" asked Tonks incredulously. "How would those two know about something like that?"

No one could answer.

"Perhaps, if I'm not much mistaken, they are not Death Eaters."

It was only then that Harry realised that Dumbledore had been there the entire time.

Sirius glanced at Dumbledore sharply. "What do you suggest then? That they're ghosts? Because anyone who knew died in the last war."

This harsh pronouncement rang in the tense air.

"Calm down, Black." said Mad-Eye.

They went back to listening, although they had clearly missed another huge chunk of the conversation, but this time the conversation made sense.

"—he probably plays Quidditch." said the man, and Harry thought he sounded proud. Which was ridiculous, he thought quickly. Why would a Death Eater (for who else could it be?) be proud of him for playing Quidditch?

"Of course he does. He's got your genes, as much as it pains me to admit." the woman said with a hint of humour.

Sirius whispered a 'no', before running out of the room.

Dumbledore asked Sirius not to do anything foolish, Snape snidely said that that was asking for too much, and Remus strangled out a "Please Sirius, don't."

Harry didn't know what Sirius was planning on doing, but by the way Hermione had covered her mouth in shock, he figured she did.

And by the time he (and Ron, Hermione, Ginny, Mr Weasley, Lupin and Shacklebolt) got to the front entrance and saw Sirius yelling at the man, Harry had a fairly good idea.

He stood there at the front steps, within the boundary of the Fidelius charm, and the more he heard…

There was a thought that he couldn't touch, a little burgeoning hope that he tried valiantly to squash (because the dead _don't come back to life_ ) so he pretended that he was just as clueless as Shacklebolt as to what was going on.

Ron was looking at him with concern and something else that he couldn't quite decipher, but he wouldn't meet his eyes.

He didn't dare, because he didn't want to see his thoughts in his best friends' eyes. It would become real then, and that wasn't something Harry was willing to take.

* * *

As James continued the playful banter with Lily that he'd established as a coping mechanism for the heavily-charged gargantuan plethora of 'OH MERLIN WHAT ARE WE DOING WITH OUR LIVES AND I CAN'T EVEN' that threatened to overwhelm them, a man came charging at them out of nowhere.

"Who the hell do you think you are!?" yelled the man, who had feverish grey eyes and an unhealthily thin frame. His black hair were thick and straight, framing the wasted yet handsome face.

And James knew that face anywhere.

"Sirius?" he said disbelievingly.

Lily gasped quietly.

"You think you're funny do you?" he sneered. James only then realised that there wasn't even a hint of recognition in his best friend's eyes.

"I'm James Potter," and before Sirius could snarl at him and snap at him, he continued. "But you're hardly going to believe something like that."

He'd briefly toyed with the idea (when he'd found out they were fourteen years into the future) that there were older versions of him and Lily running around as well, but then scrapped that idea when they'd found Harry's room. They would _never_ let their son live with _those_ people.

This was just further proof that Lily and he had been officially dead for a bit less than fourteen years. This, James thought, would make everything that much more complicated.

"You're damn well right I won't! Don't you dare—"

"Is there a specific reason as to why you're yelling at us?" asked Lily with a professionally arched eyebrow.

"You—you…" Sirius spluttered. James decided to take pity on him.

"If I told you that Harry was a year and three months old, would you believe me?"

"Not in the slightest." he growled.

"Good, so we're both on the same page." said James cheerfully.

Sirius looked a bit confused, and so did the entourage on the front steps of Grimmauld place, although neither James nor Lily could see it.

His face suddenly darkened. "Why does he live with the Dursleys?"

Sirius suddenly grew very still.

And then of course, just as they were about to get something out of him, Dumbledore appeared out of nowhere.

"Not that this isn't a very interesting conversation, but I'm sure the entire street need not be informed of the particulars." he urged gently, beaming mysteriously.

Sirius clenched his jaw and James smiled back at Dumbledore, although his smile was a bit fixed. Lily was the first to speak.

"Where then, sir?"

"The headquarters of the Order of the Phoenix is Number twelve, Grimmauld Place, London." he told them in a barely audible tone.

Instantly, the address clicked in his head and he remembered exactly how he knew it.

"Why that nasty old place? You _hate_ it. And what happened to Walburga dearest?" he asked Sirius with suppressed astonishment.

Something shifted in Sirius' eyes, and they might have been watery, but as Lily sent him a look and began walking to the house that had popped into existence between number eleven and number thirteen, James followed without questioning it.

Dumbledore walked behind them at a steady pace, whispering something to Sirius that made him hasten into the house as well.

At the front steps were a large congregation of people that neither James nor Lily could quite see clearly, although there _was_ someone there that looked like Gideon Prewett (impossible, they thought. Gideon and Fabian were both long dead.)

Coming into a semi well-lit dining room, James and Lily both took a seat and rested their aching legs. Death experiences (not near-death, Lily had been adamant about that) and standing on a street for a good fifteen minutes, not to mention the amount of walking they had to do at Privet Drive, had really worn them out.

"So, why here? What's wrong with the old place?" asked James again, this time addressing Dumbledore.

He wanted to ask about Harry, but that, he believed, could come later; it was fairly obvious his son was at this house and so there wasn't anything to worry about. He'd found him, and for now, that would be enough.

Right now, he needed answers.

* * *

 **Read and review please!**


	4. So Three Sevens Equals?

**Chapter 3: So three sevens equals...?**

* * *

Harry didn't know what to think when Dumbledore simply _let_ the strangers into the one place he was supposed to be safe, but he figured he had his reasons.

Ron seemed to think so as well, but Hermione had thinned her lips in disapproval and all three of them were utterly confused. Following the two strangers into the dining room (that Harry had yet to have been in seeing as the meeting had been taking place there), he caught his first proper look at them.

The man was…well, basically him. He would have suspected a polyjuice potion if it wasn't for the fact that his nose was a bit longer and his mouth not quite right, and that was not even counting the hazel eyes instead of the familiar green, or the taller build. His expression was fond, wise, cheeky and respectful all at once, if that was even possible. Harry knew he'd never had an expression like that one, and he didn't think he could ever manage it even if he tried.

The woman was, in one word, beautiful. There were some people on the planet that were unfairly gifted, and it would suffice to say that the red-haired, fair-skinned, jade-eyed, rose-cheeked and other-synonymous-hyphenated-words-ed woman was by far exhibit A of 'life isn't fair.' Yet there was a sweetness to her face and a grin in her eyes that turned her from someone to envy into someone to love and be loved by.

When people had told him that his mum was loved by all those who had the fortune of meeting her, a part of him thought it was just exaggeration.

He was dead wrong.

…not, of course, that he _believed_ this was his mum. No, the dead couldn't come back to life. It just didn't happen.

"So, why here? What's wrong with the old place?" asked the man, that had claimed he was James Potter (and Harry was so _angry_ at this man who thought he could impersonate _his_ father and have the _audacity_ to pretend that that was _okay_ —)

Dumbledore answered him with the same conversational tone that the man addressed him with. "Too much bad news delivered there after the last war. I felt a change of scenery was in order."

The man snorted. "The real reason this time please." he said. It was a statement, not a request, and Harry marvelled at how the man didn't even seem to care that he was speaking to _Albus Dumbledore_ like that.

"Come now, would I lie?" asked Dumbledore almost playfully. Harry and Ron exchanged a look of surprise.

"Yes." said the man.

"Enough. What is your deal? You can't just—just waltz in here without the slightest bit of remorse and expect me to just _let_ you pretend you're James!" yelled Sirius. Harry had never seen him so angry before, not even when he'd yelled at Wormtail in the Shrieking Shack.

"Fair enough. What would you have me do to prove to you that I am James?" he said matter-of-factly, like as if he had all the time in the world.

"THERE IS NOTHING YOU COULD DO! THE DEAD DON'T COME BACK!"

Harry didn't know why he kept quiet, but he—for some reason (there was something there that wasn't him, but was him at the same time) he waited to see how this would play out.

Except the woman was staring at him with her impossibly green eyes.

"Harry?" she said quietly. Her voice carried.

The man stopped looking carefree and found him with his eyes.

They just looked at each other, two imposters and the Boy-Who-Lived. The man's eyes filled with tears, and the spell was broken.

"The last time I saw you, you were giggling about pretty colours and trying to get out of bedtime." he said with a watery smile.

"Oh Harry…you're far too skinny." said the woman, and that more than anything else that had been said all night, proved to him that this was his mother.

"Mum?" Harry whispered, his voice hitching.

"Yes Harry?" she said, just as quietly.

"You're…real."

"I'd like to think so." She said, chuckling with a very slight amount of hysteria.

"Stop it. Just—stop."

Remus looked about ready to either breakdown or strangle someone.

He _looked_ at the man. "Who was the secret keeper?"

The man looked confused. "For where?"

"You know exactly where, or you would if you were James."

"Peter." he said after thinking about it for a few seconds.

"What's Voldemort's best nickname?"

The man's lip twitched. "King of Broccoli and other Assorted Green Vegetables."

"Why?"

"Harry hates them, and seeing how he's _Harry_ , he's always right." The man said it with such conviction that…well, Harry almost believed him. But it was so much harder to believe this man was his father than it was to believe this woman was his mother.

He knew logically that if one was not an imposter, the other one wasn't likely to be, but his heart had yet to accept it.

"Prongs?" said Sirius, not as though he believed it was him, but rather as though he was testing something.

"Yes Mr Padfoot?" he asked calmly.

"Why do you not like this house?" Sirius asked, and it seemed as though it was the last question he needed answered before he made up his mind about the man in front of him, for better or for worse.

"Because it makes you miserable." he said simply.

Lupin let out a strangled sob and Sirius slowly walked up to him, his expression giving nothing away.

He leaned down, and Harry could make out a suspicious shine in his eyes before Sirius hugged the man like he was drowning at sea and this man—James—was his anchor.

Sirius' shoulders shook and the hug tightened. The man—James—simply let it happen, as though he knew exactly what Harry's godfather needed.

* * *

And James did. Sirius was his best friend and his brother in all but blood. Sirius also had as many issues as _Witch Weekly_ , and considering that gossip magazine had been in print since 1256, that was saying a lot.

Sirius told James everything and vice versa. So when his Sirius looked like he was about to die if this was a lie, well. James would allow that hug. Besides, he liked hugs.

He supposed it all began with his childhood. His parents loved him, but being as old as they were, they slept a lot more and retired to bed really early (he blamed them for his insane sleep cycle as well by the way. Just putting it out there) and weren't the sort to show much physical affection barring a ruffling of the hair or the occasional peck on the forehead.

When he got to Hogwarts and became friends with the two most guilt and issues-ridden of the entire year (Peter was by far the most normal of the four of them), his need for hugs had been sated quite well.

James Potter was said to do absolutely anything for his friends, asking for nothing in return. That was a lie; he took his payment in sneaky hugs and the occasional hair ruffle. But no one really minded.

After a minute or two however, he decided enough manly sentiment had been indulged. Pulling away, and pretending not to notice the water on Sirius' face, James looked at Lily.

There was something, he thought smugly as Lily gently nudged Harry towards him, quite satisfying about having your wife know exactly what you're thinking with just a look in their general direction. It made for all sorts of brilliant mock-fights in front of the neighbours.

Bathilda never quite forgave them after they threatened to file for a divorce because James never did the dishes and Lily never changed Harry's nappy after three in the evening.

Walking tentatively towards him, Harry (spitting image of him, it was like looking in a mirror!) looked at him with barely suppressed apprehension.

James drank in everything there was about the boy standing in front of him, from his scruffy shoes to his baggy shirt, his messy hair and impossibly green eyes, his lanky build and his ten-sizes-too-big jeans.

The scar on his forehead, thin and lightning-bolt shaped and eye-catching.

James had to make a concentrated effort to look away, shoving away the hundreds of explanations for it that his mind had cooked up. After all, he'd never seen it before and he hadn't seen his son for fourteen years; it was understandable that Harry would have gotten into fights over the years.

Sirius was hovering over them, not daring to back away for fear that James might disappear at any given moment, but James didn't mind and neither, it seemed, did Harry.

Everyone else was divided on whether to believe that these two dead people were actually real, considering it defied all the laws of Magic _and_ Muggles, but they were more open to the idea after Sirius had accepted James as himself.

"How do you do Mr Potter?" asked James with an extra layer of poshness to his accent.

Harry blinked at him, before giving him a small smile and mumbling "Alright."

"Come Harry, that won't do!" cried Lily dramatically. "You must have more to say than 'alright', it isn't everyday your parents come back from the grave after fourteen years!"

"Exactly, fourteen is such an odd number to have come back after, although it _is_ a multiple of seven and there _are_ two of us, so really, I suppose arithmancically, it isn't _too_ farfetched." pronounced James.

"That's not how arithmancy works!" burst out Hermione, before covering her hands with her mouth when everyone's attention fixed upon her.

Harry would have felt sorry for her, if his mind hadn't been reeling with information overload.

"Of all the things wrong with that sentence, you _would_ pick up on that to find fault with." said Ron in a fond exasperated tone.

Hermione shot him an annoyed look before trying to stutter out an apology.

"Albus, you don't really believe them, do you? It must be a lie, to let our guard down." said Shacklebolt.

"The dead don't come back." said Mad-Eye with such conviction that even Sirius, who had been so sure that it really was James, began to doubt himself.

"That is true," said Lupin, "but then, this _is_ James. I don't think he ever quite accepted that anything was impossible."

"And Lily." said Lily, with a tone of long-suffering, as though she was used to being left out of casual stereotyping.

"Not Lily." said Sirius with a renewed conviction. "Lily wouldn't break a rule if she could help it."

"Too true my canine friend, too true." said James.

Lily pouted and rolled her eyes at Harry as though expecting him to share her exasperation with the men in her life.

" _How_ are you back?" he asked, but the moment he said it, Harry wished he could take it back; he didn't want to somehow be told that it _was_ impossible—he'd already accepted that they were his parents come back to life.

James frowned lightly as Lily looked at him expectantly. Actually, now that Harry was looking, he noticed that not only were Sirius and Remus expectantly waiting for him to conjure an answer, but that Dumbledore was as well.

It was mind-boggling.

"Well," began James, "The thing about magic is that it is far too unpredictable to properly understand."

Shifting into a more comfortable position, James urged all the onlookers to take a seat, and they all did. Harry marvelled at how everyone was subconsciously following his orders, as though he'd been giving them for years and they'd always followed him.

Once all of them (Lily did a quick head count and realised with a start that there were more than thirty people present) were seated, some having to conjure chairs, James started talking, addressing no one in particular.

"Magic has sometimes been thought to have a will of its own, and it's supported by the confirmed hypothesis that magic is dictated by intent. The principles of hereditation do not apply to magic (as evidenced by squibs and muggleborns, no offence to anyone present) and so it has been postulated that magic is actually a semi-sentient energy."

He had lost about half the people in the room with that explanation, but Hermione, Harry and (surprisingly enough) Ron had managed to keep up just fine.

"Basically," James tried to summarise, "Magic has a will of its own. Magic took us out of this world, and it is very likely it can bring us back."

Silence met this assertion. "What?" asked Tonks, confused.

James turned to her. "Today is August the second, 2/8/1995. If you've taken arithmancy at OWL you'll have touched upon the significance of that date, but it really goes into it at NEWT. The fact of the matter is, that today is the 77th septennial inauguration of the ascension of Morgana."

" _Three_ sevens!" cried Hermione, and Ron paled. Harry sat there, completely lost.

"Precisely." said James. Majority of the people in the room seemed to have a look of dawning comprehension on their faces, but Harry was just as confused as Lily, and he was glad for that. At least he wasn't the only one, and he knew second-hand that Lily was far from stupid.

"Okay James, not that I'm not glad you took arithmancy at NEWT and seem to think that everyone else did as well, but I'm utterly lost. In plain English please?" she said pleasantly.

"Seven," replied Sirius, "is a magical number. It holds power; seven years of age is when you're most likely to perform your strongest act of accidental magic, seventeen is when a wizards' magic matures fully, there are seven sins, seven virtues, seven ingredients in the polyjuice potion, seven—"

"I think she gets it Sirius." said Lupin, cutting Sirius off.

"Also, _three_ sevens." continued James. "Three leafed clover, three muses, three times (past, present, future)…I'd go on but I'm sure you get the picture."

"Putting both three and seven in the same event makes it even more potent, and if today marks the 77th septennial inauguration of the ascension of Morgana, then—well, anything's possible." said Hermione with awe in her voice.

"Exactly, but all you need to know is that, if a really strong, pure, unadulterated and desperate wish was made tonight, it would probably come true. But if you know it'll come true, it won't." finished James. He then waited for everyone to absorb the information while watching his son with a fond look on his face.

It felt so odd to see a one year old sitting in front of him as a fifteen year old with a thoughtful look on his face, and yet James felt it should have been stranger—it wasn't though. Neither James nor Lily felt that it was _wrong_ to treat fifteen year old Harry like as if they'd never missed a single birthday.

It must be one of those unexplainable parent things.

"A sound explanation; the date had completely slipped my mind." said Dumbledore with a small smile.

James shot him an amused glance. "That's why you have younger people as your mind slaves—we do all the difficult bits and you powerwalk through it like as if you'd known all along."

They shared a secret smile and Harry figured that he could relax; he still didn't understand the explanation, but if Dumbledore (and, it seemed, Mad-Eye) gave it a stamp of approval, then Harry had no objections.

"Now that _that's_ been cleared up, why has the Order HQ been relocated to the foulest quarters in Greater London?" asked Lily.

"An interesting story, I'm sure." said James, quirking an eyebrow at Dumbledore.

"Unfortunately, I have business to attend to, but I would dearly love to answer that." said Dumbledore with genuine regret. "However, I am certain that your friends can fill you in just as well. I will return as soon as I am able."

As if coming out of a trance, several of the audience rose from their seats and hurriedly made excuses as they left one by one, throwing imperceptible glances at the two very-much-alive Potters.

Dumbledore strode out the door, took off his pointed hat and said, "By your leave."

Inclining his head, he turned around and departed. The house was suddenly very quiet, with only the Weasleys, Hermione, Sirius, Lupin, Tonks and the Potters left. Harry noticed with a sinking feeling that, in all that time, Dumbledore had not made eye contact with him even once.

But he hardly had any time to dwell on that, not after the revelation he'd had today.

It was a few days late in coming, but this was by far the best birthday present he'd ever had—for the first time in his memory, Harry was truly home.

* * *

As the Dursleys made their way home, Vernon grumbling irritably about the hoax they'd fallen for, they felt that something was—off.

Stepping into their home, they noticed the door was slightly ajar and felt frightened. As one, they searched frantically in every corner for something amiss, but there was something different in the air; it felt a bit…heavier.

Finding out that Harry was no longer there wasn't too much of a surprise after finding an envelope in the kitchen telling them that _their lot_ had taken him back into their freakish world.

But what Dumbledore did find surprising, after he'd stepped into his office after a very emotionally-draining day, was that the crystalline artefact that turned red when there was a blood protection active at Number Four Privet Drive, was back to its ordinary shade of brown.

What had happened?

* * *

 **Well, here's another chapter! Happy New Year everyone! Send a review my way if you get the chance, yeah? Constructive criticism much appreciated.**


	5. The Meet and Eat

**Chapter 4: The Meet and Eat**

* * *

"I know I've asked the question quite a few times, but it has yet to be answered. Why has the HQ been moved?" asked Lily firmly.

Harry wondered why his parents were so adamant on finding out, but he thought there must be a reason for it. Sirius sighed, his face regaining the grim and bitter expression Harry had seen before Sirius had heard his nickname from James' mouth.

"Well, Dumbledore's worried that Voldemort might know now where the old HQ was, seeing as we have no way of knowing if the charms have been compromised."

James looked confused. "But how? I know it's unplottable so only those who knew where it was could find it, but no one could get in without Mad-Eye inviting them anyway."

"How come?" asked Harry.

It was Lupin that answered. "The previous headquarters, Harry, was Mad-Eye's ancestral home, and he'd invited the order members to use it as they saw fit. Dumbledore was fairly busy so it was seen as best not to use the Fidelius charm with him as secret keeper, so the Invitation charm was used to ensure that only Mad-Eye could disclose its location, but another order member had to present for the invitation."

"But why not use someone else as secret keeper? It seems less complicated that way." asked Harry.

"If the secret keeper died, then everyone who knew the location would become secret keepers." said Lily.

"Making it that much more difficult to keep the location a secret." realised Hermione.

"That still doesn't answer my question." said James.

Sirius laughed cruelly. "Mad-Eye was…compromised last year, and we can't be sure Voldemort didn't just take the information from him. Mad-Eye doesn't remember much from his stint with Crouch Jr."

Harry wondered why Sirius was so angry and then realised with a start that—

"But an Order member was needed there as well. Mad-Eye alone wouldn't have been enough." James said, confused.

Ron, Hermione and Harry shared a dark look, immediately understanding exactly which Order member was cowardly enough to have been there.

It was Lily that understood it as well. "James, there was a spy."

"Okay?" James said, prompting her to continue.

"What happens when a secret keeper discloses an address?" asked Lily impatiently.

"The one who was told can enter."

"And Voldemort was at Godric's Hollow because…?"

"He…told him." said James in disbelief.

"The _rat_ was the spy." growled Sirius, and Harry realised that all the feelings of betrayal that they had buried at the Shrieking Shack had come boiling to the surface.

"No…" whispered James, his face pale.

Mrs. Weasley seemed to have had enough. "Well, I think it's time for dinner. Of course, I'll need help if you want dinner before midnight."

"Food? Actual, edible, home-cooked food?" James asked hopefully.

Sirius and Harry burst into laughter at James' childishly hopeful expression. "Honestly, he acts like I've been starving him!" muttered Lily from next to Harry.

Ron snorted.

Everyone burst into a flurry of action, Tonks adamantly offering her help and Mrs. Weasley adamantly hoping she wouldn't, Mr. Weasley supervising the magical chopping of all sorts of vegetables, Ginny and Hermione setting out the cutlery, Bill hastily rolling away papers left over from the meeting (Harry caught a glimpse of what looked like the blueprints of a building), Lily and Lupin laying the food on the table, Fred and George apparated into the kitchen and Mrs. Weasley's muffled yelling could be heard through the door as she stirred the pot. James and Ron were sitting opposite each other at the table, waiting for the food expectantly.

Harry and Sirius made to sit down next to their respective best friends.

"You've met Mundungus, haven't you, Harry?" asked Sirius.

The thing Harry had taken to be a pile of rags gave a prolonged, grunting snore and then jerked awake.

"Some'n say m' name?" Mundungus mumbled sleepily. "I 'gree with Sirius. . . ."

He raised a very grubby hand in the air as though voting, his droopy, bloodshot eyes unfocused.

Ginny giggled as she and Hermione came to sit down next to Ron. They'd occupied the table in such a way that they were all sitting in a U, with Sirius next to Harry.

"The meeting's over, Dung," said Sirius. "Harry's arrived."

"Eh?" said Mundungus, peering balefully at James through his matted ginger hair. "Blimey, so 'e 'as. Yeah . . . you all right, 'arry?"

"Yeah, but I'm over here," said Harry.

Mundungus quickly looked to where Harry was and fumbled nervously in his pockets, staring at Harry and then James and then Harry again, and pulled out a grimy black pipe. He stuck it in his mouth, ignited the end of it with his wand, and took a deep pull on it.

Great billowing clouds of greenish smoke obscured him in seconds and both Ginny and James scrunched up their noses. "Owe you a 'pology," grunted a voice from the middle of the smelly cloud. James impatiently plucked the pipe from Mundungus' fingers and wordlessly _evanesco-ed_ it.

The acrid smell of burning socks lingered even as the smoke disappeared. James glared at Mundungus. "I _hate_ smokers, almost as much as Voldemort loves murder."

The people around the table shuddered at the name. Mundungus shrunk in his seat. "Sorry 'bout that. Couldn't 'elp myself." Then to Harry, "Seen old Figgy since?"

"No," said Harry, "I haven't seen anyone."

"See, I wouldn't 'ave left," said Mundungus, leaning forward, a pleading note in his voice, "but I 'ad a business opportunity —"

Harry felt something brush against his knees and started, but it was only Crookshanks, Hermione's bandy-legged ginger cat, who wound himself once around Harry's legs, purring, then jumped onto Sirius's lap and curled up. Sirius scratched him absentmindedly behind the ears as he turned, still grim-faced, to Harry.

"Had a good summer so far?"

"No, it's been lousy," said Harry.

For the first time, something like a grin flitted across Sirius's face. Hermione and Ron exchanged a glance before looking at Harry apologetically.

"Don't know what you're complaining about, myself."

"What?" said Harry incredulously.

"Personally, I'd have welcomed a dementor attack. A deadly struggle for my soul would have broken the monotony nicely. You think you've had it bad, at least you've been able to get out and about, stretch your legs, get into a few fights…I've been stuck inside for a month."

Before Harry could ask, James snapped his attention to Sirius. "Dementor attack?"

"It's why Harry was brought here—Dumbledore seems of the opinion that the further Harry is from the action the better. Dementors attacked Little Whinging only a couple of hours ago; the Ministry called for a hearing on the twelfth because Harry performed underage magic." explained Sirius. There was something about the slightly flattened tone of voice in which Sirius uttered Dumbledore's name that told Harry that Sirius was not very happy with the headmaster either. Harry felt a sudden upsurge of affection for his godfather.

"In self-defence?" James asked Harry. He nodded, not wanting his father to think he was doing it for the fun of it.

"I've looked it all up, they can't expel you. There's a provision in the Decree for the Restriction of Underage Sorcery for the use of magic in life-threatening situations." repeated Hermione from earlier, only much less frantically this time. And this time, Harry actually let it sink in that his friends were worried about him and suddenly felt almost sorry for how he yelled at them. Almost.

"It doesn't matter anyway." lied Harry, half-shrugging. Sirius seemed to see right through him.

"You're right Harry, it doesn't matter." said James nonchalantly. Harry suppressed the feeling of disappointment that was welling up—did James not care? Hermione looked about ready to yell at him, but Ron stopped her.

"What do you mean Mr. Potter?" asked Ron, and there was something in his voice that made Harry think that he wouldn't be above hexing James if he didn't have a good explanation, best friend's father or not.

"You don't mean—?" began Sirius incredulously.

"Obviously." he said to Sirius, before looking at Ron. "It doesn't matter because there's not a single thing they can do to touch Harry, even if they wanted to."

"But they _do_ want to." said Ginny. "The Ministry and the _Daily Prophet_ have been dragging his name through the mud all summer. They want him expelled."

"Because I've been telling them that Voldemort's back, and they don't want to believe it." said Harry bitterly. Cue shudders and flinches.

Sirius agreed. "We've been trying to spread the word around about his return, but it's proving…difficult."

"The problem is that," said Lupin as he and Lily sat down on James' other side, "while the Ministry insists there is nothing to fear from Voldemort, it's hard to convince people he's back, especially as they really don't want to believe it in the first place. What's more, the Ministry's leaning heavily on the Daily Prophet not to report any of what they're calling Dumbledore's rumourmongering, so most of the Wizarding community are completely unaware anything's happened, and that makes them easy targets for the Death Eaters if they're using the Imperius Curse."

Lily and James both looked a bit lost. "I'm sorry," she said, "but why do people not believe he's _here_? Did the deaths stop or something?"

Everyone shifted uncomfortably around them. It was Ginny in the end that spoke up. "It's because he _was_ gone. He disappeared on Hallowe'en 1981 and hasn't been quite alive until this June."

Both Harry's parents looked utterly discombobulated. "Disappeared? Is that how Harry's alive?" asked Lily, as if frightened of the answer.

"He did try to kill me," said Harry finally, and both Lily and James flinched slightly, "but the curse rebounded and hit him instead. Everyone thought he'd died, but he came back in June; there was a ritual that brought him back."

" _Bones of the Father, unknowingly given; Flesh of the Servant, willingly given; Blood of the foe, unwillingly given_." said James quietly. Harry looked at him in shock.

"How did you know?" he asked.

Sirius looked pale. "It was in a book we'd read; we were going to pretend we were performing a ritual during Easter to bring back Remus' stuffed rabbit—"

"Don't ask." said Remus exasperatedly as the rest of the table tried not to laugh.

"—we'd accidentally ripped one of his ears off and Remus was angry with us, so we thought we'd make him laugh. We had to do it convincingly, so we read up on it a bit—" continued James.

"The marauders took pranking and mischief very seriously." said Sirius solemnly.

"If you'd put about half as much effort in your school work as you did in your pranks—" began Lily.

"I'm sorry, but I'm hard-pressed to think how we could have gotten better scores than we did _anyway_ —" retorted Sirius playfully.

"Are you talking about OWL's? What subjects did you take? What did you get? Was it really difficult? Did you—" asked Hermione frantically.

"Hermione, we haven't even _begun_ fifth year yet, give it a rest!" Ron cut in.

Hermione looked at him in annoyance. "It's our most important year Ron, you need to be more—"

Harry and Ginny started laughing so hard that their faces became red. He had missed this, this playful banter and the feeling of being right where he belonged.

Bill, Tonks, Mr. Weasley, Mrs. Weasley, Fred and George all joined the table and they all dug in, Mrs. Weasley still fuming at the twins and Hermione and Ron avoiding each other's faces (which was difficult since they were sitting next to each other and kept bumping elbows).

"But my point was, Harry, that there is _nothing_ they can say against you; I'll make sure of that. You needn't worry at all." said James, before stuffing a baked potato into his mouth.

Harry smiled at him, a weight he hadn't known he had lifting from his shoulders at the assured tone of his father's voice; if James said so, it must be true.

* * *

 **I feel like there wasn't enough going on in this chapter...oh well. I hope you enjoyed it! Please review?**


	6. Like A Dog Pile

**Chapter 5: Like A Dog Pile**

* * *

After everyone had finished eating their third helpings of rhubarb crumble and custard, Mrs. Weasley realised that they hadn't introduced themselves to the two new additions to the group.

"Well," said a smiling Lily. "We know that those two are Hermione and Ron." She pointed at the two blushing teens.

"And I'm fairly certain that this interesting young lady is Ginevra Weasley." said James, because he'd asked her what her proper name was before they dissolved into a deep discussion on the art of naming things (Pigwidgeon had come up quite a few times, and so had some distant relation of James called Briochetterance Hilltrionce that no one seemed to quite pronounce correctly).

"I'm Molly Weasley, and this is my husband Arthur."

"How do you do?" smiled Mr. Weasley and shook James and Lily's hands.

"That's our eldest, Bill—" "Nice to meet you both." "—our fourth and fifth—" "I'm Fred and this is George." "No, _I'm_ Fred and _this_ is George." "—you know Ronnie, our youngest son—" He waved awkwardly. "—and our youngest, of course, Ginny."

"What a large family!" exclaimed Lily and looked at James excitedly.

"Yes, very large and…red." he replied lamely, looking anywhere but at his wife.

"It's so nice to have so many children running around!" she said pointedly.

James burst. "We're twenty one! One's enough at this point don't you think? Besides, the labour lasted thirty-two hours. You're willing to go through _that_ again so soon?"

Mr. and Mrs. Weasley smiled at the young couple fondly, remembering quite a similar conversation happening after Charlie was born.

"I'm Hermione Granger, it's nice to formally meet you." she said, a hint of nervousness still present in her voice at talking to her friends' parents. Her insecurities from first year had largely disappeared, but meeting Harry's parents brought some of them back—there was something about them that made her want to never disappoint them.

Lily smiled at her fondly. "I'm Lily Evans, and this is James."

"Wrong!" cried James exasperatedly.

Lily looked at him uncomprehendingly. He sighed. "You're supposed to say: I'm Lily Potter , and this is my husband James. We've rehearsed this, love."

Their audience was very amused by this, their reactions varying from small smiles to rolling on the floor.

"Sorry." she smiled sheepishly. They'd only been married a bit more than two years, and majority of the time they were in hiding, so she'd never gotten into the habit of calling herself Lily Potter.

James shook his head at Sirius, as though commiserating with him. Sirius was too busy laughing to truly reciprocate.

After the laughter died down, Lupin said, "This is Nymphadora—" "For the last time Remus!" "—who prefers being addressed as Tonks."

Tonks, Harry saw, had bright red hair and was glaring at Lupin, who had such a straight face that Harry knew he was laughing on the inside. Harry was certain now that he did it on purpose, though why he did Harry had yet to figure out.

"It is a pleasure to meet you all, although you'll forgive me if I say it is a pleasure to meet Harry best of all." he said, looking at Harry fondly.

Harry felt himself blushing, secretly both pleased and embarrassed. "It's nice to…meet you both too." he said, not quite sure what the protocol was for seeing your parents again after they came back from the dead fourteen years after the fact.

Neither Lily nor James seemed to mind though, because they were both beaming at him. "Now that that's out of the way, fill us in on all that we've missed." demanded Lily.

"What would you like to start with?" asked Lupin, settling down for a long night.

"Let's start with why Harry lives with the Dursleys." James said, his face having a very fixed smile on it.

"Actually, I think we should start with how you even know this." said Tonks.

Lily frowned at this in thought. "Well, we were falling, and we fell at Privet Drive. We tried asking one of the residents where we were—"

"That was you?" Lupin interrupted.

"You mean the one you shot a stunning hex at? Yes, it was me." said Lily. "James eventually remembered that Tuney lived at number four, we went inside, wondering why there was even a trace of magic—"

"You were trespassing?" Hermione looked scandalised.

James hummed. "I suppose we were. Oh, well." He shrugged dismissively.

Harry and Ron had to cover their mouths to keep from laughing at Hermione's crestfallen expression.

"Yes, and then we found Harry's bookshelf—" continued Lily.

"Harry has a bookshelf?" said Fred in consternation.

"You've betrayed the cause Harry. We can no longer be friends." George said solemnly.

"Good riddance." muttered Ron playfully.

"—no, we went to number six before we went back to number four—" corrected James.

"Stop being so pedantic!" cried Lily, who was quite fed up with all the interruptions. "Anyway, we figured out that one of you had to have been Harry, so James used the tracking charm—"

"You put a tracking charm on me wordlessly?" asked Harry incredulously.

James smiled with a self-satisfied smugness. "Of course. So it was you then? I didn't know who I'd gotten it on."

"Amazing…" whispered Hermione in awe, and Harry could see she was itching to look up wordless charms in the library when they got back to Hogwarts. The Weasleys looked impressed as well.

"Back to the question at hand though, why is Harry with the Dursleys?" asked James with a bit of impatience in his voice.

Sirius seemed a bit green at the prospect of telling them anything even remotely related to his stint in Azkaban, so he looked at Lupin as though the question was addressed to him. Lupin sighed in resignation, as though used to being the bearer of undesirable news to James whenever Sirius chickened out.

"Sirius, as you know, was named godfather. Let me finish James, it's difficult enough to explain without any interruptions." said Lupin, forestalling any oncoming comments or questions. James snapped his mouth shut, swallowing his unhelpful comment. "However, when the wards around your house at Godric's Hollow fell, the only person who knew that Sirius wasn't the secret keeper, seeing as you two were…to put it delicately, unavailable, was Sirius himself."

James nodded and Lily silently urged him to continue. "Dumbledore had sent Hagrid to collect Harry, thinking it best to transfer him into his last living relative's custody—the Dursleys—until other arrangements could be made." Lupin then swallowed, worried to continue. Sirius solved his problem.

"I knew that I needed to find Wormtail, it was the only way to prove I hadn't—hadn't been the one to…that I wasn't your secret keeper." Sirius started hoarsely, unable to bear saying the word 'betray' to James, even though he logically knew his best friend wouldn't truly think that way. His heart was another matter.

"Also, he was being an impulsive idiot." said Tonks dryly. She wasn't very pleased with her—cousin, uncle? His age was a sticking point here—and the fact that his decision had ensured her mother thought she had no decent family members left. It had caused her mother a lot of grief when Sirius was incarcerated.

James and Lily smiled bracingly, knowing exactly where this story was going but hoping against hope that they were wrong.

"I cornered him eventually (I went to his hideout before going over to your place because I'd felt something was off, and he'd run away) in a street full of muggles, yelling for everyone to hear that I'd…I'd—killed you, then exploded the street and cut his finger off before scurrying into the sewers like the rat he was." Sirius growled.

"The rest, as they say, is history. Sirius was incarcerated for being a Death Eater—" Lupin started before being cut off with an outraged cry from James, who looked about ready to hex someone for this idiocy. Lily looked livid.

"—for the murder of thirteen muggles and Peter Pettigrew." he finished. He squared his shoulders against the oncoming tirade; he wasn't disappointed.

Harry didn't know half the words coming out of James' mouth, and the other half he didn't know could be used in that way. Just as James started petering out, Lily made her anger known, sparks flying from the tip of her wand.

Sirius, even though he was pale, was smiling so brightly his face looked ready to split in half.

After Harry's parents had calmed down, Lily said, "So I suppose he's dead then? You could hardly have let him off after that display, and you're obviously not in Azkaban now…" James had a conflicted look on his face at this pronouncement, which became even more conflicted when Sirius growled out a negative.

"Wormtail slipped away again, no Moony, it isn't your fault." Sirius said to Lupin, who had a look of regret on his face.

At the Potter's confused face, Harry told them the events of his third year. They listened attentively, sarcastic quips at the ready. Harry had never had so much fun just talking to anyone in his life. For all the times people had asked for details about all the life-changing events he'd been witness to, he gave as much detail as he felt they needed to know and that was that, but with James and Lily (and even Sirius, though he hadn't had a chance to before now), he didn't mind recounting how he used to mentally recite his broomstick-servicing manual so that he wouldn't hear Aunt Marge's nonsense, or how Ron and he had sat an entire study lesson with the twins and calculated how many detentions away from expulsion they were (all together, they'd been startled to find they were four detentions away).

They all oohed, hummed and groaned at the right places (and laughed at the wrong ones), got angry when he had (and sometimes when he hadn't), even broke out into the Hogwarts School Song when Harry told them they'd won the Quidditch cup. Ron and Hermione occasionally commented, then fell into an argument that lasted a good five minutes, then made up at another point in the storytelling process, and then fell out again…

By the time he'd gone through his third year (and explained some of the highlights of his first two years because they'd been referenced—and for some reason Dobby had come up, and fourth year had also been brushed on), it was well past midnight and Mundungus had fallen asleep in his dirty plate. Tonks looked hyper-awake, Ron and Hermione looked like they'd pulled an all-nighter before a Potions exam, Ginny was leaning her face on her hand rather heavily, Mr. and Mrs. Weasley were yawning and Remus looked nearly dead.

Only Lily, James, Sirius and Harry looked anywhere remotely functional, and that wasn't exactly saying much.

"Well," yawned Lily. "I suppose it's time for bed."

James muttered something about not being able to feel his butt because of how numb it had become before standing up. As if everyone had been waiting for that cue, they all rose and headed to their own rooms—Tonks and Mundungus apparated away—with Ginny nearly falling down the stairs. Fred and George yawned so loudly that their jaws cracked and Hermione and Harry were helping Ron up the stairs, both of them finding this even harder than facing a fully transformed werewolf. Mrs. Weasley led Lily and James to Sirius' room, Sirius having gone to fetch extra blankets, with Lupin dragging his feet behind them.

Promising to get another room habitable by tomorrow evening so four grown-ups wouldn't have to share a room, Mrs. Weasley retired to her own temporary bedroom.

* * *

Lily and James thought that sleep was exactly what they needed for all of this to sink in; unfortunately, it did a little too well.

James woke up in cold sweat to hear Lily screaming in her sleep. Sirius was silently sobbing into his pillow (something about dementors and Peter, so it wasn't too difficult to assume what was keeping him awake—and the day's topic of conversation couldn't have helped any) and Remus was wide awake, trying to get Sirius to wake up. Sighing, and taking deep breaths to ensure that he wouldn't have a nervous breakdown, James made his way closer to Lily.

Being chivalrous and downright awkward, it was decided that Lily would get the bed because she wasn't a blanket hog like Remus and Sirius got the other half of it because it was his room. To any outsider it would seem bizarre to separate the married couple and relegate James to the floor, but this was just their way. There might have been rock-paper-scissors involved.

Gently shushing her, getting her to wake up and muttering soothing nothings into her hair, James managed to calm his wife down. Sirius was another matter; he refused to believe that they were real, laughed hysterically and called himself insane several times before he fell asleep again with his head in James' lap. Assuring Remus that he didn't mind that he was losing all feeling in his limbs (Lily had managed to snuggle into his side and had laid claim on his arm) and that he had better get some sleep, the four of them did settle down eventually.

Sometime during the night, Remus migrated to the bed, and stole James' blanket, just like he always did.

* * *

 **Review please? I've had a rather terrible day and could use the confidence boost...**


	7. Reaching a Breaking Point

**Chapter 6: Reaching a Breaking Point**

* * *

James woke up with cramps in three out of four appendages, Sirius drooling on his trousers, Lily using his robes as a makeshift tent and Remus having stolen his blankets.

A most auspicious start to the day.

Softly raking his fingers through Lily's hair and lightly bouncing his legs to get feeling back into them while simultaneously trying to bounce Sirius awake, it took quite a while before the three marauders and Lily managed to make it downstairs for breakfast—or lunch, as the case might be. They'd clearly overslept greatly.

They heard a lot of screaming the minute they stepped out of Sirius' room, a mixture of Walburga Black's shrieking and Molly Weasley's ire. Lily looked frightened at the prospect of having to confront _that_ so soon after awaking. Remus tiredly rubbed his eyes, both to get rid of the tiredness and to rid himself of the water that had started collecting in his eyes the minute he laid his eyes on the Potters.

Sirius, his face akin to thunder, raced down the stairs and, by the time the three of them made it to the bottom of the staircase, silence had been restored to the house. They made their way to the noise, forgoing the idea of food in favour of finding out what was happening.

Sirius and Mrs. Weasley were both red in the face from exertion, and Mundungus Fletcher stood between them with several stacks of cauldrons surrounding him, a fearful look on his face. Before anyone could say anything, Molly started tearing into Mundungus again, or so it sounded.

"GET OUT! WE WON'T HOUSE YOUR STOLEN MERCHANDISE—NOT A WORD!" she screamed harshly when Mundungus opened his mouth to argue this verdict.

"I'll deal with it 'Dung. Leave it here and go." said Sirius, almost too calmly. James was reminded of when Sirius had told him to leave the time Lily had gone too far and insulted the Potter family in fifth year. The scarily calm voice held a secret threat, and Lily had _actually_ apologised to him, filled with genuine regret and everything.

Before Mundungus could leave however, Mrs. Weasley must have heard something, because her head whipped to the left, her face flushing angrily as she took in the sight of guilty twins grinning at her sheepishly.

As Mrs. Weasley began berating them with the zeal of an energiser bunny crossed with a haughty poodle, James turned to a mutinous Sirius, asking out of the corner of his mouth, "On a scale of one to ten, how shady is Mundungus, really?"

Sirius seemed to come out of his funk for a moment, and said, "I'd say twenty, but I might be underestimating him."

Grinning at each other with identical looks of good humour, they didn't notice when Lily raised her eyebrow at them.

"What exactly are you planning James?" she asked suspiciously.

"Nothing too terrible, love." he answered with an insufferable grin, before walking over quickly to Mundungus, who was trying to quietly escape before Mrs. Weasley spotted him again.

As Lily watched James whisper things to Mundungus, who looked at him worriedly before nodding jerkily, she hoped that whatever he had planned wouldn't cause too much property damage.

* * *

Harry had awoken that morning with a start, the dream of a long corridor having ended with a winking jack-in-a-box asking him to Hogsmeade with Sirius' voice.

Lying in bed for a few moments, trying to shake off the surrealism, Harry couldn't even begin to believe what had happened last night. Not only was he no longer at the Dursleys, but he'd also met the two people he'd thought he would never see again.

Ron groaned before rolling over in his bed, breaking Harry out of his thoughts. Grabbing a pillow and flinging it at his best friend, he thought about getting up and finding them immediately, before realising how unaccountably desperate that seemed. A small part of him also thought that, if this was a dream, he didn't want it to end that quickly.

Blinking blearily, Ron mumbled, " 'at time is it?"

Harry squinted at the ancient clock on the dressing table and said, "It's nearly half past eight."

Ron grumbled a bit about morning people, before getting up heavily and heading to the attached toilet. Harry didn't think anything of it, seeing as how this was typical of every morning of every day that he'd spent with Ron, be it at Hogwarts or the Burrow.

After everything that had happened last night, he hadn't really been able to appreciate the room he had been assigned properly. Dust motes danced in the few rays of sunlight streaming through the gap in the heavy curtains. He got off the bed, a bit of dust rising from where he pushed himself off (he made a mental note to dust the bedding again, and truly appreciated just how dirty the place must have been for there to still be _that_ much dust after Mrs. Weasley had finished with it), and tugged the curtains open.

There was, disappointingly enough, not much left of the sun as, after a few seconds of staring at the brick wall of Number 13, the sun went and hid behind the clouds. But that was British weather, he supposed, and was as temperamental as a Hippogriff, so it wasn't too much of a shock.

Ron emerged from the toilet, looking mostly awake as he waited for Harry to be done, before they both headed downstairs for breakfast.

It felt so domestic that Harry nearly felt that nothing as extraordinary as his parents' return from the dead had occurred at all. Maybe he had just dreamed it all. After all, he thought self-deprecatingly, it wouldn't be the first time.

Meeting Hermione and Ginny halfway down the stairs, they all mumbled a good morning with varying degrees of enthusiasm (from Hermione's chipper "Good morning you two!" to Ginny's barely audible grunt of acknowledgement, the range was _very_ varied).

In the dining room, Mrs. Weasley greeted them — "I was just about to send George up to wake you all!" — before setting them all to work laying the table. After eating a sizeable amount (Ron eating three times as much as Hermione), Mrs. Weasley informed them that they'd be 'tackling the drawing room'.

They started clearing away their plates, Harry looking at his friends questioningly. "All we've been doing is cleaning, all summer. Reckon we're all experts by this point, and now you've joined us, you'll have to do the same." Ron explained.

"Oh dear, they're awfully late, aren't they?" said Mrs. Weasley, wringing her hands nervously.

"Who's 'they' mum?" asked Fred, dumping his wrought-iron goblet into the sink.

"Sirius and the lot." Mrs. Weasley said, a bit unsure as to how to classify 'the lot'. Harry felt inexplicably embarrassed that Lupin and his godfather (and his _mother_ and his _father_ ) had overslept, and nearly apologised before Mrs. Weasley turned to him and asked him to go wake them up.

"It would be unseemly if I did it, of course." she said, trying and failing to act like this was natural. Harry could sympathise; it was awkward, and he didn't know quite what to expect from the 'guests'. That didn't, however, stop a flash of happiness going through him at the thought of seeing them again, this time in the cold light of day.

Ron and Hermione went with him to Sirius' room ("Too many bloody stairs!" "Honestly Ron, it isn't _that_ bad." "Says you! You're more out of breath than me, and I sit on my arse all day—" "You don't need to be so _crass_ Ron—") seeing as he had no idea where it was.

The door had a handwritten plaque signifying the owner of the room, the brass dulled by rust and dirt. Knocking quietly, almost afraid of opening the door, the trio waited for a beat before Hermione said nervously, "Maybe they're still asleep?"

"Mum would want them woken up though." Ron said, looking at Harry. "Sirius, from what Lupin's said, isn't a light sleeper. Reckon you're going to have to go in there mate."

Squashing the burgeoning jealousy he felt at that statement (what right did Ron have, knowing more about his godfather than Harry himself did?), Harry nodded before tentatively opening the door.

It squeaked so loudly that Harry was certain everyone in the house must have heard it. Walking into the room silently, with Hermione beckoning him forward, Harry noticed that there was a lopsided lump on the bed.

Lupin was sprawled on the edge of the bed within a nest of blankets (at least five of them by Harry's estimate), his toes sticking out of the cocoon, pointing at the aforementioned lump.

Taking a closer look, Harry saw his mother (his _mum_ ) breathing lightly, snuggled against his dad ( _like looking in a mirror, honest to Merlin…_ ). His dad had a vaguely uncomfortable look, his lips parted slightly, with Sirius—

Harry had to stifle a laughter, but Ron let out a snort. Hermione cooed silently as they saw Sirius muttering in his sleep and chewing James' robes (something about 'that's my bone Moody, nomnomnom').

Harry moved to Lupin, who was closest, and shook him awake. Eyes snapping open, looking a bit bloodshot, Lupin seemed to smile at him sleepily.

Muttering a good morning, Lupin stretched and hit the side of Sirius' face with his feet. Snapping his attention to the other three occupants of the bed, Harry thought that Lupin might cry. As it was, he clapped a hand to his mouth and seemed to pull himself together (the trio pretended they didn't hear the sigh of hysterical relief he made after pinching himself), and turned to Harry.

"Mrs. Weasley's serving breakfast." whispered Harry.

"I don't think they'll be waking up any time soon. By the looks of it, not until lunchtime at the earliest. Would you mind letting Molly know that she needn't wait for us?" Lupin replied quietly.

Nodding, Harry excused himself, leaving Lupin to gather his thoughts before snuggling back in his covers (the smell of the Forbidden Forest at night lingered on the sheets, and he had pleasant dreams for the first time in fourteen years).

They cleaned the drawing room, spraying Doxycide and getting rid of a nest of puffskeins, trying and failing to listen in on Order members going in and out of the house (with Sirius still asleep, Ginny explained, Mrs. Weasley had to take all the guest calls. "Otherwise she'd never leave us unsupervised for this long.") and hearing about the twins' owl order service for their joke products (he'd caught them nicking a doxy). All in all, it was an interesting experience, but hardly what he expected after finding out that this was the headquarters of the Resistance.

He found his mind wandering to the sleeping adults upstairs, wondering if they'd woken up yet.

He had expected to feel a bit afraid of their accepting him, afraid that they wouldn't approve of him, insecure about their relationship, the mechanics of how they worked as a family, but…it was as though he couldn't find it in him to worry about anything like that. He supposed it had to do with last night, when they'd found out about how he'd wanted Sirius dead (and never had he thought he would have the courage to tell _anyone_ that) and James had gravely informed him that anyone would after The Humiliating Hangover incident of 1976 and Lily had casually said that she'd wanted to kill Sirius every other day of her Hogwarts years ("I guess it runs in the family!").

Or perhaps it was something about when he'd mentioned blowing up Aunt Marge and running away from home, and James had paled and had looked about ready to faint while Lily had gripped his hand tightly before asking Harry exactly how big she'd gotten, "the better to picture her, my dear, and immortalise it. I never did like _that_ side of the family."

Sirius had been right; they balanced each other out, but most importantly, they didn't think he wasn't justified in what he did. They…they loved him.

Somehow, that was all he needed.

The mundanity of the day broke when Ron's stomach grumbled and Mrs. Weasley sank into the sofa, tired after de-doxifying the curtains for most of the daylight hours.

"I think we'll tackle those after lunch." Mrs. Weasley pointed at the dusty glass-fronted cabinets standing on either side of the mantelpiece. They were crammed with an odd assortment of objects: a selection of rusty daggers, claws, a coiled snakeskin, a number of tarnished silver boxes inscribed with languages Harry could not understand and, least pleasant of all, an ornate crystal bottle with a large opal set into the stopper, full of what Harry was quite sure was blood.

Just then, Mrs. Black started screeching again. Mrs. Weasley huffed in irritation before getting up to open the door, telling them that she'd get them some sandwiches. As soon as she left, everyone dashed over to the window to look down onto the doorstep. They could see the top of an unkempt gingery head and a stack of precariously balanced cauldrons.

"Mundungus!" said Hermione. "What's he brought all those cauldrons for?"

"Probably looking for a safe place to keep them." said Harry. "Isn't that what he was doing the night he was supposed to be tailing me? Picking up dodgy cauldrons?"

"Yeah, you're right!" said Fred, as the front door opened; Mundungus heaved his cauldrons through it and disappeared from view. "Blimey, Mum won't like that..." He and George crossed to the door and stood beside it, listening intently. Mrs. Black's screaming had stopped again.

There was an explosion of sound as Mrs. Weasley shouted at the top of her voice, "WE ARE NOT RUNNING A HIDEOUT FOR STOLEN GOODS!"

"I love hearing Mum shouting at someone else," said Fred, with a satisfied smile on his face as he opened the door an inch or so to allow Mrs. Weasley's voice to permeate the room better. "It makes such a nice change."

"—COMPLETELY IRRESPONSIBLE, AS IF WE HAVEN'T GOT ENOUGH TO WORRY ABOUT WITHOUT YOU DRAGGING STOLEN CAULDRONS INTO THE HOUSE—"

"The idiot is letting her get into her stride." said George, shaking his head. "You've got to head her off early, otherwise she builds up a head of steam and goes on for hours. And she's been dying to have a go at Mundungus ever since he sneaked off when he was supposed to be following you, Harry—and there goes Sirius's mum again—"

Mrs. Weasley's voice was lost amid fresh shrieks and screams from the portraits in the hall. George made to shut the door to drown the noise, but before he could do so, a house-elf edged into the room. It had a filthy rag tied like a loincloth around its middle, with white hair growing out of its bat-like ears. Its eyes were a bloodshot and watery grey, fleshy nose large and rather snout-like. The elf took absolutely no notice of Harry and the rest.

Acting as though it could not see them, it shuffled hunchbacked, slowly and doggedly, toward the far end of the room, muttering under its breath all the while in a hoarse, deep voice like a bullfrog's, "…Smells like a drain and a criminal to boot, but she's no better, nasty old blood traitor with her brats messing up my Mistress's house, oh my poor Mistress, if she knew, if she knew the scum they've let in her house, what would she say to old Kreacher, oh the shame of it, Mudbloods and werewolves and traitors and thieves, poor old Kreacher, what can he do…"

"Hello, Kreacher." said Fred very loudly, closing the door with a snap.

The house-elf froze in his tracks, stopped muttering, and then gave a very pronounced and very unconvincing start of surprise.

"Kreacher did not see Young Master." he said, turning around and bowing to Fred. "Nasty little brat of a blood traitor it is."

"Sorry?" said George. "Didn't catch that last bit."

"Kreacher said nothing." said the elf, with a second bow to George, adding in a clear undertone, "and there's its twin, unnatural little beasts they are."

Harry didn't know whether to laugh or not. The elf straightened up, eyeing them all very malevolently, and apparently convinced that they could not hear him as he continued to mutter. "...and there's the Mudblood, standing there bold as brass, oh if my Mistress knew, oh how she'd cry, and there's a new boy, Kreacher doesn't know his name, what is he doing here, Kreacher doesn't know…"

"This is Harry, Kreacher," said Hermione tentatively. "Harry Potter."

Kreacher's pale eyes widened and he muttered faster and more furiously than ever. "The Mudblood is talking to Kreacher as though she is my friend, if Kreacher's Mistress saw him in such company, oh what would she say—"

"Don't call her a Mudblood!" said Ron and Ginny together, very angrily.

"It doesn't matter," Hermione whispered, "he's not in his right mind, he doesn't know what he's—"

"Don't kid yourself, Hermione, he knows exactly what he's saying," said Fred, eyeing Kreacher with great dislike.

Kreacher was still muttering, his eyes on Harry. "Is it true? Is it Harry Potter? Kreacher can see the scar, it must be true, that's that boy who stopped the Dark Lord, Kreacher wonders how he did it—"

"Don't we all, Kreacher?" said Fred. Harry then noticed that the noise outside had stopped, and so too, it seemed, had the twins and Ginny.

Cracking the door open, and trying to see what was going on, the twins forgot about Kreacher and instead eagerly nudged Harry. "It's your parents Harry! They're finally up."

"Lucky them," muttered Ron under his breath. "They got to sleep till noon while we were up at the crack of dawn doing Kreacher's job."

Hermione pursed her lips, and Harry didn't know whether she was angrier about the house elf comment or with the laziness that defined Ron.

In the end, it didn't matter, because Mrs. Weasley had noticed them and begun the longest tirade Harry had heard in her presence. Sneakily dodging her wrath, the youngest Weasleys, Hermione and Harry retreated to the foyer, where they happened upon the four just-got-out-bed-and-didn't-bother-to-comb-my-hair adults. Kreacher, Harry realised with a start, had disappeared. But that was quickly forgotten in favour of watching Sirius' angry glance at Mrs. Weasley and his mum's barely suppressed apprehension.

His dad however, looked so at ease that he might as well have been on holiday in the Bahamas.

"Good morning Harry!" he beamed. His mum nudged him, and he amended his statement. "Good morning Harry and company!"

"James!" his mum said furiously, before smiling at them in practiced embarrassment. "Sorry about him. He's, what one might call, retarded. How was your day?"

James, instead of taking offense, simply smiled in amusement at the jab, and Lupin let out a guffaw before controlling himself. Sirius seemed to get out of whatever funk he was in, and said, "Time for breakfast?"

"I'm afraid it's lunchtime Sirius. The children will be having some sandwiches. I forgot to ask you yesterday, what with everything that happened, but I think there's a boggart in the writing desk, and if you would be so kind as to check it out, that would be very kind of you." Mrs. Weasley answered, her voice carefully polite, having finished yelling at the twins.

Sirius merely smiled detachedly, before saying, "As you wish."

Harry, Ron and Hermione exchanged wary glances, wondering at the tension between the Weasley Matriarch and the Head of the House of Black.

"I could do with a bit more than sandwiches." Lily said. Turning to his dad, she said, "Oh, James! Can you make me some French toast? They're perfect for brunch, and don't take all that much effort to make."

James smiled in resignation before turning to Mrs. Weasley with mock exasperation in his voice. "Molly, you wouldn't mind terribly if I used your kitchen, would you? My wife's a slave driver, and I haven't quite managed to file a domestic abuse complaint. Something about lack of evidence, I imagine."

Harry didn't know whether to panic or laugh, and Hermione looked so stricken that he was honestly concerned. The Weasley children though, snickered.

Lily huffed good-naturedly, and Mrs. Weasley said, after recovering from that bold statement, "Don't be silly James, I can make that myself. No need to trouble yourself."

"I insist. You can hardly be expected to do all the work when it's not just family, but unexpected (and demanding) guests you're feeding as well." said James.

"Not to mention how tired you must be after working all day. It's the least James can do." said Lily. James stuck his tongue out at Lily, and at that Ron and Harry both laughed, while Hermione and Ginny smiled in amusement.

"Oh well, dear, if it's not too much trouble, of course, if you insist—"

They all sat around the dining table, Lupin and Lily insisting on setting the table (apparently, they had worked while the four of them had slept, and so it wouldn't do for them to work for lunch as well. Harry wasn't complaining.) and Sirius looked slightly mutinous.

"Sirius!" called James from the kitchen. Sirius looked startled, and then shocked everyone by crying.

Tears, and yells, and blubbering, heavy shudders wracking his frame as he tried to stop his own tears, but they kept coming as though he'd completely lost control.

It was like watching a dam burst, and Harry suspected that it was the pressure and guilt building up ever since Hallowe'en 1981 finally catching up to him. Of course, he didn't know for certain, but Lupin (if he'd been in the right state of mind) would have agreed with him. After all, that was what was happening to him too.

Lily looked lost and Lupin was in a far off place in his own head, as though having several flashbacks that made him want to cry, but he had far more control than Sirius did. Mrs. Weasley looked far too horrified to react at all, and Hermione looked far too scared. The Weasley children were all pale, and Harry reckoned he wasn't much better.

He had honestly never been in a position like this before, never seen anyone lose control like this, much less an adult, someone he looked up to. His thoughts were disjointed but, setting aside his own worries, Harry did the only thing he knew would help.

"Dad!" he yelled.

* * *

Lily looked at her son, startled at his yell, before feeling some of the tension about him accepting them, that she hadn't thought even existed until it was gone, fading away.

She had never seen Sirius like that, so…so broken. He hadn't been like that yesterday, and he certainly hadn't been like that the last time she'd seen him (fourteen years ago, she reminded herself, still trying to get used to the idea).

James came rushing into the dining room, eyes wide and stance ready for an attack.

Likely, Lily thought, he had stood for a moment wondering who on earth Harry was yelling for before realising it was himself, and then thought someone was attacking them. Understandable, considering this did feel like a dream, and they'd been in hiding for so long that a yell still meant danger, of the Death Eater Variety.

Taking in Harry's helpless expression and Lily's lost one, James turned to the sobbing mess that was his best friend.

As if a switch had been flipped, James relaxed and his eyes took on a look of understanding and acceptance, as though he had expected this eventuality. He made his way to Sirius and engulfed him in a hug, rubbing his back like his mother had done for him, and telling him quietly to let it all out, that he wouldn't judge, that he'd be there for as long as he needed him.

Sirius grabbed onto James desperately, the franticness of his actions emphasising his distress.

Lily almost couldn't watch the once proud and handsome man that was her husband's friend and the Owner of the Potter Couch sob into James' neck, seeing the transformation that the years had brought upon him with startling clarity; he was emaciated, and hollow; empty. She wasn't even sure how much of their Sirius still existed.

The others had turned away as well, as though they were intruding on a private moment.

She couldn't even begin to imagine what the loss of James _and_ Harry must have done to him, to know that one was dead and blaming himself for not trying hard enough (because Sirius had cracked when Regulus, whom he'd had no contact with whatsoever for _years_ , had died, and James had meant so much _more_ to him) and the other was so far away and unattainable because of the very same mistake.

She felt a wave of anger at the thought that he'd spent _twelve years_ in the darkest and most miserable hovel on the planet, reliving his worst memories and his guilt—as if he didn't do a good enough job of that already without the Dementors' help—because of _Peter_ _ **Fucking**_ _Pettigrew_ —

As the cries subsided, and Sirius was on the verge of hysterical laughter, Lily said with zeal, "This place needs a paint job."

James said in the most matter-of-fact tone, "I couldn't agree more."

Sirius now looked embarrassed, and the Weasleys were torn between keeping quiet and voicing their confusion at the two older Potters' exchange. He wiped his eyes on the sleeve of his robes, but James just motioned for him to get up and led him to the bathroom.

"What did you mean by that?" asked Hermione finally, as they left the dining room.

"You'll see soon enough." Lily smiled evilly.

Opening the tap and getting the water flowing until it heated up, James went about tying Sirius' hair with a spare hair bauble as if this was the most natural thing in the world.

"Wash up Sirius, and then help me with the French toast. Merlin knows I have no clue where anything is kept." said James.

Sirius mustered a smile, and was surprised at how easily it came.

"I'm sorry." he said quietly.

"No. I'm sorry." said James, just as quietly.

Sirius looked at him questioningly, silently asking him to elaborate on just what _James_ could _possibly_ have to _apologise_ for when _he_ was the one that had let Harry be alone for twelve years, got them killed, hadn't even managed to kill the rat, abandoned Moony when they'd _**promised**_ they never would—

"For leaving you." James said hoarsely.

Sirius heard the subtext—sorry for leaving you alone and friendless, for letting you suffer, for not seeing that the rat was a rat, for leaving Harry and you and not being there for you when you needed me most, for abandoning family.

Sirius replied in the only way he knew how. "Idiot." _Not your fault, so shut up about it._

James grinned and said, "Love you too." _It isn't yours either, so_ _ **you**_ _shut up._

* * *

 **This chapter's far longer than the previous ones...welp, can't be helped! I'm open to any and all suggestions for future chapters by the way, and while I have a rough outline, feedback can change this story if it's intriguing enough. Favourite character? Too OOC for Sirius to cry? Leave a review and tell me, please?**


	8. So Regulus Black was a?

**Chapter 7: So Regulus Black was a...?**

* * *

Meanwhile in the dining room, Lily was trying to snap Lupin out of whatever funk he'd gone into, nudging him and clicking her fingers in front of his face to get him to respond. Mrs. Weasley seemed to be a functioning human being again, and went up to Lily to help her, sitting Lupin onto a chair and making him 'a nice cuppa'. Harry and the other children looked at each other meaningfully, trying to gauge how much of what they saw was an elaborate dream and how much of it was actual fact, because Sirius was hardly the type to break down _that_ badly.

"Especially in front of Mrs. Weasley…" muttered Hermione.

"What?" asked Harry, confused.

Ron answered quietly. "Mum and Sirius have been arguing nonstop for a while now."

"They're worse than Ron and Hermione." whispered Ginny.

Harry couldn't really imagine Sirius and Mrs. Weasley fighting like Ron and Hermione, mainly because he didn't think either one of the adults had sexual tension catalysing their fights, but he thought he should keep that to himself.

"What do they fight about?" asked Harry. Both of them were ideologically in harmony, both were on the same side of the war, both had had to live under the same roof; Harry couldn't think of what the reason could possibly be.

"Loads of stuff. Mum keeps complaining that Sirius doesn't do enough around the house, Sirius is on mum's case about where she puts things after she's done cleaning them, Sirius doesn't want to redecorate and mum is itching to start…" rattled off Fred in an undertone.

"But they only ever really fight because of…well, you." finished George.

Harry opened his mouth to ask what _he_ could have possibly done to make the two of them fight, but just then, Sirius and James had come back into the room. He filed the question in the back of his mind, to be asked at a later date (just like all the other questions he had…)

Sirius looked embarrassed as he walked back in, his eyes still slightly red-rimmed, but he soldiered on. James next to him seemed as easy-going as ever.

James looked over at the two women and Lupin, before Lily sent him a nonverbal plea for help. Harry saw James try to stifle a smile, before he said, "Remus, the library's on fire."

Who knew that was all it took for Lupin to come back to reality?

James and Sirius then went into the kitchen, and didn't emerge for another fifteen minutes. A sweet smell emanated from the kitchen, and quite a few stomachs grumbled in impatience. Mrs. Weasley looked positively uncomfortable, as though she'd never not been in the kitchen doing the cooking before. Harry supposed that after more than twenty years of doing the cooking for at least seven people, she probably wasn't used to it.

Lupin was studiously ignoring everyone's eyes, ignoring the tinkle of china and the soft laughter coming from the kitchen. Everyone was really silent, unnaturally so, and Harry didn't like it one bit. But he also didn't know how to break the silence.

Finally, in a bout of honest desperation, Ron asked Hermione, "So how's your exam preparation going?"

Fred and George looked horrified. "Of all the topics of conversation you could have picked, you choose _that_?" asked George.

"Have we taught you _nothing_?" demanded Fred.

Lily then asked, "So what optional subjects did you four choose?"

The ice thus broken, Hermione launched into a breathless rant on how she couldn't pick only three subjects (Harry worriedly wondered whether his parents would be disappointed with his subject choices, and that he'd only chosen the mandatory two instead of three like Hermione had done.), so she'd done all of them, and then dropped Muggle Studies and Divination.

"So you're doing Ancient Runes, Arithmancy and Care of Magical Creatures." Lily summarised.

Hermione nodded, and Lily turned to Ron and Harry. "What about you two?"

"Divination and Care of Magical Creatures. Both of us." Ron replied, knowing that Harry didn't want to. The semi-mind reading came with the premise of being Harry's best friend.

Lily seemed to lose some of her smile's potency, and Harry felt ten inches tall. Of course, he thought, she would look down on those choices! They're the easy subjects, and she's supposed to be the brightest witch of her generation!

Harry realised with a start that this was _the_ first time he had ever cared about grades or academics, and he could now sort of sympathise with Hermione's need for perfection.

Not that he would start studying for exams five months in advance or anything as drastically ridiculous like that. There was a line to be drawn, and this is where it would be. Clearing his throat nervously, he mustered a smile at her. She smiled back, a bit more hesitantly than she had all the previous times, and asked Ginny what she'd taken.

"Muggle Studies and Ancient Runes." she said. Harry, surprised as he'd never known what subjects he took, remarked, "That's an odd combination of subjects."

Shrugging, Ginny replied, "Well, I'm not a muggle nut like dad, but I do find it interesting, and Bill used to teach me some runes when I asked him about it. I thought I'd enjoy it, and I do."

Harry was suddenly struck with the oddness of Ginny talking to him normally; it had been gradual, but he only just registered that she wasn't a blushing mute around him anymore.

"Ancient Runes was one of my favourites, but Sirius was always better at it." said Lily.

At Hermione's surprised exclamation, (Harry was a bit taken aback as well. Sirius had been called clever, but never in an academic way, at least, not in front of him.) Lily raised an eyebrow in amusement. Just then, James and Sirius came into the dining room carrying serving plates, and the conversation stilled.

Sirius looked to be in good humour, but Harry didn't know whether to put much stock in that; Sirius had looked pretty put-together right before he burst into tears. James still had an easy smile on his face, as though he wasn't capable of any other expression.

"Brunch is served!" said James in a surprisingly accurate French accent.

When the French toast was set on the table, Harry immediately understood why Ron was a food connoisseur; Mrs. Weasley had amazing cooking skills, and while it looked delicious, his dad just didn't compare. Feeling guilty about such thoughts, Harry dug in with the rest of them, trying to hide his face amongst the golden bread.

But there was something different about those French toasts, something he couldn't quite place, but…he thought it tasted like love. In a way that Mrs. Weasley's food never had.

After munching on the last piece of French toast, Lily decided to initiate conversation with Sirius to gauge his emotional stability.

"Hermione was surprised at your intelligence Sirius." she said slyly.

"Beg your pardon?" blinked Sirius.

"I mentioned how you were the best among us at Ancient Runes, and she was more shocked than Bellatrix after the fourth gunshot."

" _What?_ "

The casual way Lily was talking about shooting someone—whoever this Bellatrix was—was sort of breaking Hermione's worldview, and demolishing her faith in humanity.

"Oh, it's nothing important. There was a little skirmish back in '79 and the muggle police got involved. Their metallic wands went ' _pew pew_ ' and Bella only just managed to raise a shield in time." explained James casually.

"Who's Bella?" asked Ron.

The adults exchanged significant glances. Molly said, "A death eater. She's in Azkaban now."

A charged silence descended on the gathering, and Hermione once again wondered as to how Mrs. Weasley could be so insensitive as to bring Azkaban up in front of Sirius. (She, of course, didn't know that the silence was because everyone else on the table had heard that name at least in passing, with Harry recalling the trial he'd watched in Dumbledore's pensieve, and the woman who'd been proud of destroying Neville's childhood).

"Well," said Lily in a strained jovial voice. "Now that the mood has plummeted to an all-time low, I think we should begin James."

James looked at her uncomprehendingly for a few moments before understanding her cryptic request. Hermione thought it was rather adorable how in sync they were. But that didn't stop her from finding their taciturnity annoying.

"Begin what?" asked Harry. Hermione was rather glad he did; goodness knows _she_ wasn't going to, not after Lily brushed her off when she'd asked what paint job…meant…

"Are you talking about the paint job you mentioned?" she asked.

Lily smiled at her, nodding. "Come along ducky, we could use all the help we can get!"*

James turned to Sirius and asked him whether he minded.

Hermione and Ginny shared a glance of confusion. Good, thought Hermione. I'm not the only one confused.

Sirius looked as lost as the rest of them did. "You remember the kitchen wall? Where Harry flung all sorts of semi-liquids?"

Grinning with mirth, Sirius nodded and said, "James, if you do that to my entire _house_ , I will be your eternal servant."

"I thought you already _were_ my eternal servant Padfoot." he replied innocently.

They both turned to Remus, and his lips twitched before he said in a grave voice. "It's true Sirius; after the beach ball incident of '77, I'm afraid you're an indentured one."

"I was _tenured_!" exclaimed Sirius.

"Yes," said Lily smugly. "For the next 200 years, if I recall."

"But I'm promising to be _eternal_ now."

Fred and George looked back and forth at the 'adults' on the table, with laughter shining in their eyes. Harry and Ron on either side of Hermione looked at each other in askance.

It was Molly that finally brought them back out of their private bubble. "What exactly are you planning on doing, if I may ask?"

Sirius' good mood dimmed slightly, and both Lily and Harry were quick to notice. James didn't seem to notice at all, or he was really good at hiding it. Hermione wasn't quite sure what to believe; she hardly knew them.

"Our kitchen in Godric's Hollow was this really sickly shade of yellow." began James.

Lily interjected. "Actually, the entire house was a terribly sickly shade of yellow. The whole place needed repainting—"

"So we did, except Lily prefers things the muggle way, and we had to go out and buy a gallon of 'Up Pompeii' paint—" James continued before Sirius interrupted him.

"You would not _believe_ the amount of time he took to decide which colour he wanted, and in the end he picked it because of its historically-ness!"

" _Ahem_. Anyway," James said, blushing slightly. "We ran out of paint just as we were about to do the last wall, the only one in the kitchen that was completely bare."

Lily then finished the story with a smile. "James thought we'd do it the magical way, seeing as how we really couldn't be bothered to go to town and buy more for one measly wall, and we wanted to finish the job before we went to bed. James took out his wand the same time I did, both of us thinking independently that a bit of contrast with the rest of the walls in the house would be nice. I went for light green, while James decided a cream would look better. We'd only hit it with a minor amount of paint each, but…"

"Lily got terribly cross with me, and started shooting dollops of different coloured paints at my face. I kept dodging, and then I started retaliating."

"It was an all-out war." Lily reminisced fondly. "The more I tried to hit him and failed, the more he laughed and the less I felt like murdering him. When we stopped to catch our breath, we were laughing so hard, we looked at the room in horror."

James grinned, not looking horrified at all. "Every kitchen surface, including the unpainted wall, was _covered_ with splashes of paint of every possible colour imaginable."

At Molly and the children's horrified expressions, James and Lily just laughed. Sirius said, "They fixed most of it, but they left that one wall like it was. And it looked brilliant actually, almost like they'd done it on purpose."

"It was literally just splashes of paint covering the entire wall, but it did actually look really good. By some miracle, all the colours on that wall were complimentary. We've called it 'the paint job' ever since." said Remus.

Their audience looked at the four of them with varying expressions of wonder (Ron and Harry), suppressed horror (Mrs. Weasley and Hermione) and amusement (the twins and Ginny).

"And you want to do that… _here_?" Mrs. Weasley asked faintly.

Sirius almost frowned. "Why not? This place could do with a bit of colour, and besides, it's _my_ house."

The look on Mrs. Weasley's face at that statement was not missed by the majority of the room, but, eager to rid themselves of the prevalent tension, they chose to ignore it. Lily looked at the children. "You are, of course, welcome to help."

Harry was rather excited by the prospect, if truth be told, and so were the Weasley children. Hermione voiced the flaw in the plan. "We, most of us, are underage. We can't perform the spell required, unless you're planning on buying gallons of paint and arousing the shopkeepers' suspicion."

James looked unperturbed. "Not to worry. The ministry won't be able to pick up the trace here."

Sirius, surprisingly enough, was unassured. He bit his lower lip before saying, "Actually Prongs, because its Harry, I'm not really all that certain that the trace _wouldn't_ pick up on magic done around him."

Harry's mood plummeted. Of course, he thought bitterly, it was just his luck that he was the odd one out. _Again_.

James, however, still seemed unfazed even though Lily looked ready to tell them that the adults would handle it. "Well, let's just search him then. If you don't mind Harry." James said casually, barely tacking on the request at the end. "Between the four of us, I doubt there's a spell that we couldn't pick up on."

"You can do that?" asked Harry, for once feeling like things were going his way when James nodded, amused at his son's happiness.

After a twelve minute session of Lupin, Sirius, Lily and James casting several spells and muttering long and convoluted incantations (Hermione was mentally taking notes), they declared him free of all extra traces.

"So, the spell goes…."

* * *

Ron had paint in places he didn't even know _existed_ before now, but he'd never had so much fun in his life. Grinning at Harry's blue and purple face, and suppressing a laugh at Hermione's green hair, Ron called first dibs on the shower and valiantly scrubbed away at all the paint.

At one point in the fierce battle, Harry and he had been on opposite sides (alliances had shifted so very often that at one point or another, they'd all been against everyone in the room at least once) with Harry on Sirius, Lily and Ginny's team and James and he'd been cornered. Ron had never moved so fast or with such grace in his life (and Ginny had never looked so yellow before). Ron smiled softly at the thought of Harry.

He may not have been the most sensitive of blokes, but even he knew that Harry laughing without restraint or worry was a rare thing. Far too rare, Hermione had once said. It made him happy to see Harry so happy; the guy deserved it really. Merlin knows how he himself would have fared had he gone through half of what Harry had!

Making their way downstairs after cleaning up and surveying their handiwork, not a single face could stop grinning.

Every wall of the drawing room was splattered with every shade of colour imaginable, and all the tapestries and sofas (which, last Ron checked, had looked like a rainbow had vomited on them) had been charmed back to their original shade of velvet green. Surprisingly, the dark mahogany and silver instruments set the whole thing off nicely; the colours were almost unnaturally complimentary.

Mrs. Weasley at first thought the entire place looked garish, and indeed, after they'd sorted out the items in the various cupboards, finding an unpleasant-looking silver instrument, something like a many-legged pair of tweezers (which scuttled up Harry's arm like a spider when he picked it up, and attempted to puncture his skin. Sirius seized it and smashed it with a heavy book entitled _Nature's Nobility: A Wizarding Genealogy_ ), a musical box that emitted a faintly sinister, tinkling tune when wound, and they all found themselves becoming curiously weak and sleepy until Ginny had the sense to slam the lid shut, a heavy locket that none of them could open, a number of ancient seals and, in a dusty box, an Order of Merlin, First Class, that had been awarded to Sirius's grandfather for "Services to the Ministry", she wasn't very endeared to the room that had been so very stately prior to the 'paint job' as it were.

"It means he gave them a load of gold," said Sirius contemptuously, throwing the medal into the rubbish sack.

Several times, Kreacher sidled into the room and attempted to smuggle things away under his loincloth, muttering horrible curses every time they caught him at it. When Sirius wrested a large golden ring bearing the Black crest from his grip Kreacher actually burst into furious tears and left the room sobbing under his breath and calling Sirius names Harry had never heard before.

"It was my father's," said Sirius, throwing the ring into the sack. "Kreacher wasn't quite as devoted to him as to my mother, but I still caught him snogging a pair of my father's old trousers last week."

James stopped Lily from smacking Sirius for being so utterly dismissive, and then promptly shot into an attentive position when Remus twitched involuntarily.

James looked at Remus. "What is it Moony?"

Startled, Remus said, "I don't know what you mean James."

"You twitched."

Sirius seemed to find that a ridiculous thing to focus on, and so did plenty of others in the room, who'd seen Remus unconsciously twitch often enough that it only registered as a habit.

"Yes, well done Prongs." said Sirius patronisingly.

Throwing Sirius a dirty look, Lily _looked_ at James before asking Remus to humour them.

Remus simply looked away, and if Ron hadn't seen the watery look on his face, he might have thought that he was ignoring them. Although why he'd be on the verge of tears because of that he had no idea.

Mrs. Weasley looked up from the vial of dragon blood in concern.

Composed, Remus said almost casually. "Nothing really; the necklace just makes me feel twitchy."

James reached for the necklace that everyone had shoved in the reject pile, and closed his hand around it just before Kreacher grabbed it. Unlike the previous times Kreacher had come in, this time he pounced on the necklace, not letting go even when James stood up and tried to pull it out of his hands.

Alarmed, everyone tried to get Kreacher off of James (or really, the necklace), and by now Kreacher was distraught. "No, not the necklace—bad messy boy will LET GO!"

"Kreacher!" yelled Sirius. "Let go this instant, that's an order!"

Welts from where Kreacher had dug his long nails into James' forearms were dripped blood when the house elf's grip slackened. Harry was horrified; that had escalated far too quickly.

Trembling, Kreacher bowed very low (and distinctly mockingly) to Sirius, muttering frantically under his breath.

"Stand up straight," said Sirius impatiently. "Now, what do you think you're doing?"

"Kreacher is cleaning," the elf said unconvincingly. "Kreacher lives to serve the noble house of Black —"

"— and it's getting blacker every day, it's filthy," said Sirius. Harry let out a surprised laugh at the casual way his godfather had said that, but Lily was not amused.

"Sirius, I will _hurt_ you." threatened Lily. Hermione looked at her approvingly, feeling as always that Sirius was being far too harsh on the poor elf.

"What's so special about this locket?" asked Remus, voicing most of the room's question.

James looked uncommonly focussed on the necklace. Taking a closer look, he could not believe he hadn't seen it before.

"Bloody hell…" he whispered unintentionally.

Ron, Hermione and Harry exchanged glances of the confused and 'we're going to be involved in another kerfuffle aren't we?' variety.

"What is it James?" asked Sirius, moving closer to take a look, then swearing under his breath. "You don't think it's—"

"Oh I'm sure Sirius. Remus _never_ twitches without good reason."

Remembering instances where that twitch had saved them from detentions and, later, killing curses and ambushes, Sirius felt rather foolish for dismissing them; he'd forgotten what it was like to use others' cues to make decisions. Looks like he'd have to learn how to be a marauder all over again —and he'd never thought _that_ would happen…

Damn Peter. He'd taken his world away, his family away, and now he'd taken away the ease with which he'd been able to read Remus. What more had he lost that he couldn't recall?

"What is it?" said Lily, not seeing anything remarkable about the necklace. Yes, it had a rather pretty S engraved on it, but it was hardly worthy of the attention it was getting.

Gravely, and a tad bit excitedly, James said, "It, my dear, is Salazar Slytherin's locket, thought to have been lost for centuries.*"

Lily could only blink. "Oh. So?"

"It's Slytherin's locket and it made Remus twitch. What do you mean 'so'?" he asked indignantly.

Thoroughly unimpressed, Lily eyed him and said, "Why would Kreacher care about it any more than the Order of Merlin?"

Harry thought James looked distinctly like he wanted to hit something, and Remus and Sirius shared an exasperated look.

"You're comparing _Salazar's locket_ to a _fucking Order of Merlin_?" James bit out angrily. " _Muggleborns!_ "

Looking offended, Hermione said, "What exactly do you mean by _muggleborns_?"

James seemed not to have heard, because Kreacher chose that moment to lunge at it again. "GIVE IT BACK!"

"KREACHER!" barked Sirius. "What's the matter with you?"

"NO, NO—MASTER, NOT THE LOCKET, MUST DESTROY—NO, BAD KREACHER COULDN'T—" he screeched before devolving into incoherent wailing and hysteria, clinging to James' arms with a vice-like grip. The indents from where the nails gouged the skin began bleeding afresh, and Harry was genuinely worried about the entire situation.

Between Ron, Fred and George, they managed to pry Kreacher off of James a second time, and this time Lily stood between the mad house elf and her husband with her wand pointed at the wailing creature. "What do you mean by 'must destroy'? What do you know about this locket Kreacher?"

Her voice was so authoritative that it snapped Kreacher out of his mental breakdown long enough for him to call her a filthy Mudblood, and just before Ron could strangle him and Sirius could kill him, James snapped at the elf, "That's quite enough. Sirius, order him to tell us what's up with the locket."

Sirius, looking mutinous but complying, ordered Kreacher to spill and not skimp on the details.

Harry, Remus, Sirius, Lily, James and the Weasleys listened in growing apprehension to a story about a cave, Voldemort, Master Regulus' sacrifice, and inferi.

The elf curled into a ball, placed his wet face between his knees, and began to rock backward and forward.

"Master Sirius ran away, good riddance, for he was a bad boy and broke my Mistress's heart with his lawless ways. But Master Regulus had proper order; he knew what was due to the name of Black and the dignity of his pure blood. For years he talked of the Dark Lord, who was going to bring the wizards out of hiding to rule the Muggles and the Muggleborns…and when he was sixteen years old, Master Regulus joined the Dark Lord. So proud, so proud, so happy to serve…"

Sirius looked sick to his stomach, and Harry thought it was because of what Kreacher was saying, before it struck him that Regulus must have been a relative of Sirius'. James placed a hand on Sirius' shoulder and silently watched the elf that looked like it had lost hold on whatever sanity it had ever possessed.

Remus saw Harry's confusion and whispered, "Regulus was Sirius' younger brother. He'll deny it, but he was miserable when we found out Regulus had died."

Nodding, they kept a careful watch on Sirius (and Harry hadn't known he'd had a brother…what must it have been like, to have your own flesh and blood fight against you in a war constructed by a madman to eradicate an entire sect of people, and have your family consider you a failure for not being a follower of a murderous sycophant, and watching your baby brother become a murderer…?) and went back to listening to Kreacher's story.

"And one day, a year after he joined, Master Regulus came down to the kitchen to see Kreacher. Master Regulus always liked Kreacher. And Master Regulus said…he said…" The old elf rocked faster than ever. "…he said that the Dark Lord required an elf."

"Voldemort needed an elf?" Harry repeated, looking around at Ron and Hermione, who looked just as puzzled as he did.

"Oh yes," moaned Kreacher. "And Master Regulus had volunteered Kreacher. It was an honour, said Master Regulus, an honour for him and for Kreacher, who must be sure to do whatever the Dark Lord ordered him to do…and then to c-come home." Kreacher rocked still faster, his breath coming in sobs.

"So Kreacher went to the Dark Lord. The Dark Lord did not tell Kreacher what they were to do, but took Kreacher with him to a cave beside the sea. And beyond the cave was a cavern, and in the cavern was a great black lake…"

Lily and Remus had furrowed brows in concentration, whereas Sirius kept getting paler. James looked almost—almost like he expected it…the Weasleys seemed concerned, frightened and intrigued despite themselves, with varying consistencies.

"…There was a boat… and a b-basin full of potion on the island. The D-Dark Lord made Kreacher drink it…" The elf quaked from head to foot. "Kreacher drank, and as he drank he saw terrible things…Kreacher's insides burned…Kreacher cried for Master Regulus to save him, he cried for his Mistress Black, but the Dark Lord only laughed…he made Kreacher drink all the potion…he dropped a locket into the empty basin…he filled it with more potion."

Lily and Hermione seemed to be trying to figure out what the potion could have been, to cause hallucinations and physical discomfort to the degree that it would affect a house elf.

"And then the Dark Lord sailed away, leaving Kreacher on the island…Kreacher needed water, he crawled to the island's edge and he drank from the black lake…and hands, dead hands, came out of the water and dragged Kreacher under the surface…"

"How did you escape that…? It sounds like you were firmly trapped…" whispered Sirius hoarsely, looking at Kreacher as though seeing him for the first time.

"Master Regulus told Kreacher to come back," he said.

"We know—but how did you escape the dead bodies?" asked Harry. "They're called inferi Harry." Lily explained quietly. Sirius seemed like he was at war with himself, and James looked like a loved one had just died.

Kreacher did not seem to understand.

"Master Regulus told Kreacher to come back," he repeated.

"I know, but—"

"Well, it's obvious, isn't it, Harry?" said Ron. "He Disapparated!"

"But…that seems like a pretty major flaw in the design of the place." said Harry. "Surely it was warded against apparation!"

"It was…" muttered Kreacher.

"Elf magic isn't like wizard's magic, is it?" said Ron, "I mean, they can Apparate and Disapparate in and out of Hogwarts when we can't."

There was a silence as Harry digested this. How could Voldemort have made such a mistake? But even as he thought this, Hermione spoke, and her voice was icy.

"Of course, You-Know-Who would have considered the ways of house-elves far beneath his notice…it would never have occurred to him that they might have magic that he didn't."

"The house-elf's highest law is his Master's bidding," intoned Kreacher. "Kreacher was told to come home, so Kreacher came home…"

James asked kindly, "So what happened when Regulus found out?"

"Master Regulus was very worried, very worried," croaked Kreacher. "Master Regulus told Kreacher to stay hidden and not to leave the house. And then…it was a little while later…Master Regulus came to find Kreacher in his cupboard one night, and Master Regulus was strange, not as he usually was, disturbed in his mind, Kreacher could tell…and he asked Kreacher to take him to the cave, the cave where Kreacher had gone with the Dark Lord…"

"And he made you drink the poison?" said Ginny, disgusted. But Kreacher shook his head and wept. Hermione's hands leapt to her mouth and Lily moaned: they seemed to have understood something.

"M—Master Regulus took from his pocket a locket like the one the Dark Lord had," said Kreacher, tears pouring down either side of his snout-like nose. "And he told Kreacher to take it and, when the basin was empty, to switch the lockets…" Kreacher's sobs came in great rasps now; Harry had to concentrate hard to understand him.

"And he order—Kreacher to leave—without him. And he told Kreacher—to go home—and never to tell my Mistress—what he had done—but to destroy— the first locket. And he drank—all the potion—and Kreacher swapped the lockets—and watched…as Master Regulus…was dragged beneath the water…and…"

"Oh, Kreacher!" wailed Hermione, who was crying. She dropped to her knees beside the elf and tried to hug him. At once he was on his feet, cringing away from her, quite obviously repulsed.

"The Mudblood touched Kreacher, he will not allow it, what would his Mistress say?"

Sirius muttered in shocked incredulity. "Reggie was brave? Merlin, he…he…Kreacher, take me to the cave."

James smacked him upside the head and Remus face-palmed. Lily just looked at him sadly. "What part of inferi and certain death wish do you not understand?"

"The part where Reggie _died_ for a locket! You knew him James, he would do anything to save his own skin—Regulus wasn't—" began Sirius hotly.

"Master Regulus was a good master! Master Sirius be terrible and poor Mistress would be horrified with the vile—"

"Shut up Kreacher!" he strangled out. Kreacher snapped his mouth shut unwillingly.

"You still didn't answer Kreacher: what's so special about the locket? Why was it important to destroy it?" asked Lily.

"And why is it still intact?" asked Remus, wondering how the elf hadn't managed to carry out the task he'd been entrusted with.

"Answer Kreacher!"

"Master Regulus not saying why, but…Kreacher is trying _everything_ and the locket is not being destroyed…Kreacher is not being a proper house elf—Kreacher disobeying Master Regulus…"

"You tried _everything_?" asked James pointedly. Kreacher nodded miserably.

James slumped into a sofa and stared blankly at the ceiling, and Sirius gave him a searching glance. Remus asked James, "What are you thinking?"

"I need a library."

* * *

*I know Gaunt had the locket and then Borgin & Burke's displayed it after Merope sold it to them, and then Hepzibah Smith bought it before Voldemort got it, but James doesn't. It's a common myth that the items were 'lost'.

*Ducky is a fairly common thing to call _anyone_ in the East Midlands, UK. It's like calling someone 'love', and it doesn't really mean anything special.


	9. The Revealed and Concealed

**Chapter 8: The Revealed and Concealed**

* * *

This pronouncement was met with a disbelieving silence.

Fred, in a strangled voice, said, "You want the _library_?"

George looked affronted. "First Harry has a bookshelf, then Ron asks about homework, and now a marauder wants the library. What next, Ginny runs for Minister of Magic?"

"How ever did you guess?" said Ginny drily. Harry bit his lip in an effort to keep in his laughter at the dirty look the twins threw her way.

Lily smiled at them, before an ominous thump was heard from upstairs. "What was that?"

Sirius smacked his forehead. "I completely forgot! Buckbeak hasn't been fed yet. I'd best go do that."

"You have a hippogriff in Grimmauld Place?" asked James.

Sirius grinned roguishly. "In mother dearest's bedroom."

Remus thought that he was recovering from the afternoon's revelations quite nicely, all things considered. He himself was reeling from the information overload, and he thought that Sirius just needed to get away from everyone to sort it all out; Buckbeak was a godsend.

"Well, let's go James." said Remus. For the ten years he'd known James and Sirius, whenever they said they needed 'a library', they usually meant 'Remus, find the books I need and skim them for me.'

It was nice to know that some things never changed.

He remembered that back then it had irritated him because he thought they were using him and he'd resigned himself to it, but now it just made him giddy and so _happy because James was back and Lily was back and the world was finally going_ _ **right**_ _again and it hadn't been right since 1981 and now it was because JamesLilyHome—_

Remus didn't know whether to giggle insanely or cry like Sirius had done, but either way it would be frowned upon, so he did neither.

James made to get up, before asking a retreating Sirius, "When's the next Order meeting?"

Simultaneously, both Mrs Weasley and Sirius answered, "Four days from now."

They both eyed each other, and the awkwardness was overwhelming; Remus didn't know how James withstood it without blinking, but Lily looked as uncomfortable as he felt. They really wouldn't get along, he thought to himself. He had hoped briefly that the Potter's return would alleviate some of Sirius' cabin fever and make the Weasley matriarch and Sirius more amicable, but he realised now that it was just wishful thinking.

But speaking of the Order reminded Remus of his task. He said, "You'd best hurry up James. I ought to have left this morning for Wales."

At James' questioning look, he answered, quite forgetting that they had an audience. "Werewolf pack there seems neutral, but we're not too sure."

And instead of stopping there and letting people make of it what they will, he elaborated, knowing that his view on the matter was something that James (unlike Dumbledore) wouldn't simply brush aside. "Though I don't know how much I'm going to be able to do. The first war did a number on their family, and after the new Werewolf legislature, they're hardly sympathetic to our cause."

"Should you really be discussing these things when there are children present?" said Mrs. Weasley pointedly. Sirius looked about ready to light her head on fire with his glare, and Harry was hard-pressed to think of a reason to stop him; finally, for the first time that summer, he was getting information, and he _did not_ need Mrs. Weasley's mollycoddling, no matter how well-meaning.

James seemed not to have heard; Remus fondly and exasperatedly remembered James' selective hearing; it was the main reason he'd reached a record of 942 times for asking the same person out and being rejected. Lily used to say that he was deaf and Remus used to want to laugh because she didn't even _know_ and it was _true_ …

"What we need to do is incentivise being on our side…what can we provide them with that the King of Broccoli can't?" said James thoughtfully.

Lily seemed to have hit a brainwave, and Hermione was struck with how _similar_ Lily and Harry looked when they'd happened upon a completely unprecedented idea that _might actually work_. Lily turned to Harry. "You mentioned a potion that allowed a werewolf to keep their minds after the transformation. Maybe we could provide them with that?"

"Won't work if they have a potioneer as well." said James consideringly.

Sirius had a feral grin on his face. "They don't; not anyone really good anyway, not enough for the Wolfsbane potion."

Remus had adopted a thoughtful look as well. "It could work; it's insanely expensive—"

"I've got it covered." said James.

"—and extremely challenging and time-consuming to brew—"

"Might as well put my potion-making abilities to good use." shrugged Lily with a smile.

"—but." he said.

"But what Moony?"

"I don't know whether all of them even _want_ Wolfsbane. Some of them don't trust it, and you _know_ how they feel about wizards in general."

"But most of them do want it right? Then that should be good enough of a start; they're getting something close to a treatment for _free_. If that isn't incentive, I don't know what is. Plus, they can't just take it once and then turn their backs on us—it's a monthly thing. No, I think it's a sound idea, and we should go ahead with it." said Sirius.

" _Are you quite finished?_ "

Mrs. Weasley looked livid, while the children were pretending not to show that they'd been listening avidly.

Before Sirius could open his mouth (and Remus was sure he was going to tell her to shove it) James beat him to it. "This is hardly something that they couldn't have guessed on their own Molly; Remus is a werewolf, the werewolves generally side with the darker side, we're trying to get them on ours. I hardly think it's a need-to-know thing, honestly."

Mrs. Weasley was furious. Couldn't they see, she thought, that it was giving them dangerous ideas? Couldn't they see that if they got this information, it made them a liability—that they could be _tortured_ if it seemed they had even an _inkling_ as to what the Order was up to?

They could call her controlling and smothering all they wanted; her babies were _not_ going to be _**tortured**_ because of _idiots trying to make them think they could even_ _ **remotely**_ _handle this and they couldn't oh stars Gideon and Fabian's smiling corpses and they were_ _ **so**_ **proud** _Molly to do the right thing and they had no teeth and their fingernails had been plucked out and oh Morgan they were dead and her babies couldn't not again He was_ _ **back**_ _and Ginny still had nightmares and Ron was there_ _ **every bleeding time**_ _and Harry always Harry why Harry why couldn't they just leave him_ **out of this** …

"Well," she said in a false cheery voice. "we still have a lot of cleaning to do and…"

Lily seemed to have not noticed that she was stepping into a quagmire, just like Hermione forgot to read the mood when she'd found something particularly interesting in a book and was dying to let someone know. "Do you have a list of the ingredients and the procedure? We could get started right now."

Remus shook his head. "Severus might have it though; we'll ask him in the next Order meeting." he said carefully, wary of Mrs. Weasley's reddening face.

James suddenly exploded, making everyone in the room jump. "SEVERUS SNAPE? IN THE ORDER? WHAT IN MERLIN'S NAME—"

It was Sirius' turn to placate his best friend. "I know James; that's how I felt too, but he's on our side now, and he's invaluable, really James, don't look at me like that, it's true. He's been spying on Voldemort for us and feeding him false information ever since he returned."

"I DON'T CARE! HE'S A LYING, HYPOCRITICAL **MONSTER**!" seethed James.

Harry didn't know what possessed him, but he tentatively said, "He's not that bad, dad, really."

James face had twisted with hate and it made him look ugly; Hermione was so _afraid_ of that hatred, and she wanted it to go away so **badly**. A teacup on a side-table behind Kreacher's head shattered spontaneously, and James made a concentrated effort to reign in his magic.

" _You tell him that!_ Tell him you don't think he's that bad," he hissed at Harry. "and I hope he _dies_ of the guilt!"

Lily looked so small when she said, "Please, stop it James. Let it go."

He turned to face her, and Remus knew it was going to cut her deeply, before James said a thing. "I would forgive _Voldemort for destroying the wizarding world_ before I get over _**SEVERUS SNAPE**_."

She shuddered, and James bit back what he was going to say next. He got up and promptly left, still seething at the thought of Snape.

In the quiet that followed, only Sirius was brave enough to speak. "That could have gone worse."

Harry, having never seen _anyone_ blow up that badly (not even Uncle Vernon was that scary at his most drunk and derogatory), asked Sirius with a shaking voice, "That could have been _worse_?"

Lily spoke softly, "It's always like that when it comes to Severus."

Pulling herself together, she faced Remus and said, "Right, you get the notes on the Wolfsbane potion from Severus and I'll brew it, then that's the werewolves sorted for now. How are we on the Giant front?"

"I think that's enough Order secrets being bandied about in front of _non-Order members_ thank you!" Mrs. Weasley said in a strained voice.

Lily looked contrite. "Sorry about that; I got carried away."

Ron and Harry looked put out, while the twins looked angry and Hermione looked resigned. Ginny said defiantly, "I don't see why we shouldn't know; it's not like we can't be trusted with secrets."

Harry admired her gall, because if Mrs. Weasley had been looking at _him_ like that, he would have turned into a puddle.

Lily grimaced understandingly. Remus, on the other hand, had decided that James had stewed long enough and Sirius wasn't likely to help him cool down (in fact, Sirius would just add fuel to the Severus hatefest) so he went to go look for him. "I'll see you lot in a bit; His Majesty requires my unwanted but necessary attention."

Lily said to Ginny (and the other children in general), "It's not so much that we don't trust you to be able to keep a secret; we just don't want you to be tortured for the information, or worse."

"What do you mean by worse?" asked Hermione.

Sirius explained when Lily seemed unable to. "Well, they could just take the information off you without you ever knowing – you don't know how to guard you mind. Legilimency breaks people, alters their personalities, or changes the way they see the world permanently, or gives them brain damage, if done by someone inexperienced."

"Legilimency?" asked Harry.

"The art of reading someone's mind." elaborated Lily. "Voldemort's particularly gifted with that branch of magic."

Harry was conflicted; on the one hand, he now understood better why they couldn't be told sensitive Order information, but on the other hand, he still believed that he had more of a right to know than anybody else in the room.

"There's got to be a way to prevent someone from reading our minds, surely!" cried Hermione, shuddering at the thought that someone could not only probe into her inner most thoughts, but also destroy her from the inside, turning her own mind against her.

Lily and Sirius exchanged a look, wondering whether they should tell them about the countermeasure, but they needn't have worried—Ginny did it for them.

"Well, there _is_ a way, but it's really complex and frowned upon because of its association with Dark wizards." mused Ginny. When her brothers, Harry and Hermione looked at her as though she'd grown a second head, she elaborated defensively.

"Occlumency—it's basically a shield around your thoughts and it helps dull really strong emotions. I had so many nightmares after first year that—well, the healers recommended it and I've been practising, but I'm not getting anywhere with it." she said frustratedly. She really hadn't gotten anywhere, but at least the nightmares were becoming less frequent.

"It's really difficult to master. Many in the Order can only manage a basic level, and it isn't very good either. It requires a great deal of will power and magical skill that very few wizards possess. Don't be too discouraged if it isn't working for you." said Sirius encouragingly.

"So it's like a meditation technique..." muttered Hermione thoughtfully.

"But, if _Order_ members can't really manage Occlumency, how does that make us any different?" asked Ron hotly.

"Because using Occlumency, even at the most basic level, is still better than being completely unprotected." said Lily.

Sirius continued. "Not to mention that on Hogsmeade trips, you're far more vulnerable than any Order member. And with the Ministry not acknowledging Voldemort's return, any of your classmates' Death Eater parents can just waltz into the castle and—well, they can't do anything physically, but if you were to develop a headache as they passed by you, and suddenly you started to hate the sight of treacle tarts, well. Teenagers change their preferences all the time, don't they?" Sirius gave a wry smile at the end, before blinking at yet another dull thump.

"I'd best go feed Buckbeak—hopefully he won't chew my fingers off for neglecting him this long."

He walked out the door, leaving a thoughtful audience of three fifteen year olds, a fourteen year old and two seventeen year olds.

Mrs. Weasley hoped that this lecture would get the children to give up on their persistent enquiries about things that simply weren't any of their business, but she was being far too optimistic—the cogs in their brains were turning, and all of them were looking for ways around the limitations that had been revealed to them.

"So…let's continue with the cleaning, yeah?" asked Lily, keen to bring a sense of relative normalcy back to the room.

Slowly, almost sluggishly, the children all began to collect the plastic bags filled with the rejected items and put them away. Sighing, Lily turned her thoughts to her husband and his werewolf friend, and the likely shouting that would be going on wherever they had ended up running off to.

When they had first arrived at Grimmauld Place yesterday, she had seen Severus in the crowd of Order members, but had chosen to focus on her son instead of the broken friendship that she only revisited in the deepest of nights in the darkest recesses of her heart.

He had grown up, she mused sadly, but the dour expression on his face had shown her that at his core, he was still the same Severus who had first told her about magic, the same Severus who had been her only friend in the first few months of Hogwarts, the same Severus who understood her when nobody else did, the same Severus who made her feel like she belonged, the same Severus who had made himself her anchor when the whole world was going mad.

Shaking herself out of her memories, Lily moved to help Ginny stuff the pile of old relics in yet another plastic bag.

He was the same Severus, the same one that had called her a Mudblood, the same Severus that had cast a _Sectumsempra_ on James after they'd come back from their first date at Hogsmeade in seventh year*, the same Severus that had nearly killed her baby when he was still in her womb with a misfired spell, the same Severus that had called her Harry a devil's spawn that wouldn't amount to anything worthwhile, the same Severus who forgot their friendship when it suited him and reminded her of it when it pleased him.

No, she thought firmly, there were good things about Severus, but there were far too many bad things in their history for her to ever see him the same way she had before.

In a way, James' anger was justified, but at the same time, just like the way he could never truly hate Peter, she could never truly hate Severus.

What strange ways human hearts seem to work in…

* * *

* _Sectumsempra_ was created by Snape, who had written that it was 'for enemies'. James was Snape's worst enemy (he featured in Snape's 'worst memory' heavily after all), so who else could he have used it on? And the circumstances under which it was done...the love of his life had gone on a date with the man he hated most in the world when she'd told him time and again that he was a bullying toerag that she would never associate with. Betrayal, anger, hurt, regret...it _is_ possible for him to have done it, same as the misfired spell that could have nearly killed prenatal!Harry, considering he was a Death Eater and all that Lily and James did was fight for the Order. (Pottermore has informed me that they truly _were_ unemployed, living off of James' family fortune.)

 **Sorry for the long wait! I was in Berlin on a school trip and time seemed to run away from me...**


	10. Like an Overflowing Pot

**Chapter 9: Like an Overflowing Pot**

* * *

Harry was confused, although he tried his best not to show it.

Ron handed him a particularly dusty hand mirror, with sinisterly glowing runes etched into the silver, and Harry unceremoniously dumped it into a bin liner nearly filled to the brim with other such suspicious items.

"What do you reckon's going on then?" Ron asked out of the corner of his mouth. "I mean with your dad. Snape's evil, don't get me wrong, but that was a bit excessive."

Hermione, who was in the general vicinity, bit her lip. "What I'm more concerned about is this occlumency. I haven't come across it in any of the books I've read, which means that either it's not in the books I've read—"

"Or it's in the restricted section." finished Harry. "So we're going to learn it then?"

"It's really hard though Harry." interjected Ginny, who'd been close enough to hear their conversation. "Pretend you're scrubbing something or mum'll get suspicious."

Ron picked up a dirty rag and began slowly polishing the silver vial full of blood without paying much attention, while Hermione picked up two other artefacts and pretended to be perusing them. Harry turned to Ginny.

"About that, I didn't know you still had…about first year." he said awkwardly, unsure of why he was bringing it up but feeling that it was the right thing to do. Ginny smiled at him wryly.

"Don't worry about it."

Harry let it go, even though he still felt he ought to have at least asked Ron about Ginny even once during the summer after second year. But then, he'd been having nightmares of his own, and he hadn't known Ginny that well back then anyway, and Ron hadn't said anything so he'd just forgotten about it really. Not to mention that the whole reason Ginny had succumbed to the diary in the first place was because of him _anyway_.

Riddle had specifically said that he'd been 'anxious' to meet Harry, and that Ginny had bared her soul for possession because of her crush on Harry—he was already predisposed to feeling guilt, but that just firmly cemented in his head that anything to do with Voldemort was usually his fault.

"You've been practising occlumency? Which books are you using? Do you have a tutor?" asked Hermione, the cogs in her brain already spinning and trying to work out a learning schedule for the three of them.

Ron was both dreading the extra workload and really glad that Hermione's efficient mind was on their side.

"Not any books or anything so structured. Dad just tells me to try and clear my mind before going to bed and spend at least twenty minutes before bed ordering my thoughts so that they don't get jumbled up in my dreams. I usually forget to do it though, I get so tired after a full day of lessons." Ginny answered, glancing at her mother to ensure she was still thoroughly preoccupied with the cabinet.

"Wait, _dad's_ been teaching you occlumency?" asked Ron incredulously.

"It does make sense Ron. Mum did say that everyone in the Order knew it, and Mr. Weasley is in the Order." said Harry, although he was surprised as well—Mr. and Mrs. Weasley were brilliant people, but he'd never imagined them to be…well, competent, as harsh as that sounded. They didn't strike him as fighters at all, but he supposed they must have been if they were in the Order.

Hermione looked like she had come up with a battle plan. She looked at Harry, as though weighing pros and cons in her head, before saying, "Harry, you usually have a good read on people; how likely is Mr. Potter to help us learn occlumency?"

"You want to ask dad?" Harry asked, bemused.

Hermione nodded. "Mrs. Potter would be my first choice, but she seems a bit…downtrodden at this point."

Harry looked over at Lily, seeing her lost in thought while staring at an ornate skull. He could see why Hermione had chosen not to ask her, but he was far more inclined to ask her than his seething dad.

Ron seemed to be of the same opinion. "He'd be better off asking Trelawney to help him than his dad, for all the good it'll do."

"He doesn't have to ask _now_ Ron. I'm not _that_ stupid!" Hermione impatiently snapped.

Eager not to let their fight escalate further, Harry said, "I could try, though I don't know whether he agrees with Mrs. Weasley on how involved we ought to be with the Order."

"What are you four whispering about?" Mrs. Weasley called out suspiciously.

"Trying to figure out what type of blood is in the vial mum. Hermione thinks it's dragon blood, but Ron reckons it's vampire. Harry can't seem to make up his mind." replied Ginny smoothly, and if Harry hadn't been privy to the actual details of the conversation, he would have believed her completely; she didn't even stutter.

Mrs. Weasley pursed her lips before telling them to get a move on. "We've already wasted precious hours _painting_."

Harry looked at Ginny questioningly. She grinned at him, "It comes with the premise of living with Fred and George."

"No, it doesn't. Ginny just doesn't like getting in trouble." interrupted Ron, used to Ginny getting away with plenty of misdemeanours by lying convincingly.

"No one likes getting in trouble Ron. You're just terrible at improvising." she replied before wandering away.

Hermione would have said something at the sibling squabble, Harry was certain, but she was too busy scheming to notice Ron spluttering in indignation. If he hadn't been eager to learning occlumency himself in order to be included in the Order meetings, Harry was sure that he would be regretting giving Hermione the go ahead.

But that didn't make him stop almost regretting it.

* * *

James took a deep breath and let it out slowly a couple of times before finally calming down. He knew he'd blown completely out of proportion at the news about Snape, but he genuinely thought that he'd been in the right. He admitted that he hadn't exactly made Snape's life easy at Hogwarts, what with nearly killing him on several occasions (some of them were genuine accidents, some of them were miscalculated pranks.) Either way, he'd never wanted Snape dead, which was the main thing that set them apart.

Snape wouldn't have any compunctions if he were to kill James, but James would never be able to bring himself to kill Snape. Too much history, an active moral compass and the fact that he used to be Lily's best friend kept him from even contemplating actually enacting any of the murder scenarios his vivid imagination had supplied him with.

James sighed as he thought about the greasy-haired Slytherin. Throughout his Hogwarts life, Snape had been the one person he'd ever been jealous of. He had had everything James had wanted at one point; a mind-boggling grasp of theoretical magic and spell-crafting, a natural aptitude for strategic thinking and potioneering, an indecently complex vocabulary that ensured no one would ever doubt he was intelligent (unlike James, who knew that everyone thought he was baseline or average until the first year exam results came out), the ability to understand people's pain (because leading a sheltered life meant that James never quite understood the pain of growing up unloved, or struggling with _anything_ , and with the friends he had, he wished he could understand them better, even if it meant suffering through all the pains they went through) and, perhaps most of all, his easy relationship with the one person in James' life that had taken his breath away from the moment he truly _saw_ her.

Snape took all these things for granted though, and inevitably lost it all. Perhaps not his natural talents, but his social life was abysmal, and James let the anger drain away because at the end of the day, it's the choices we make that define us.

James hadn't spent the years after the Levicorpus Incident of '75 brooding over all the ills the world had heaped on him. Snape had. He could have chosen to let go, to improve himself like James had done after it had been shoved in his face that he was in the wrong. He hadn't.

And that was not James' fault.

Everything that happened during the war only compounded on their issues and neither one of them was very likely to forgive the other. In fact, not in a million years would James Potter and Severus Snape get along.

Brushing away the bitter, hurtful, _disgustingly familiar_ thoughts that always welled up whenever he brooded on Snape (because there was so much more than jealousy between them), James finally looked at Remus, who was silently waiting for him to get a grip on his usually mellow temper.

"Feeling better?" Remus asked, no judgement at all present in his voice.

"Much. Shall we?" James asked, as though nothing had actually gone wrong.

That was the thing about James—once he had worked his way through an emotion or situation, he genuinely felt as though it hadn't happened. Remus was grateful, because after weeks of dealing with Sirius, who, quite frankly, internalised _everything_ , he was beyond happy that James, for all that the two were similar, didn't brood.

Remus led the way to the Black Family Library and, when they happened upon the heavy-set door, quickly lost all interest he'd had in undertaking this endeavour. He turned to James and said, in a way that was distinctly _not_ whining, thank you very much, "Do we have to?"

James looked at him enquiringly, "Yes. Yes we do."

Remus sighed theatrically, then opened the door before motioning for James to go through first. He walked into the room and immediately understood where Remus' trepidation came from.

The room was filthy, the cobwebs seemed to be more numerous than the books, the shelves were in terrible need of dusting, there was a nest of dead mice on the armchair by the soot-covered fireplace, the chandelier (the Blacks really did love their chandeliers, thought James fleetingly) looked to be the home of a hitherto unclassified species of puffskein hybrids and the air had a distinct crackle of lightning, death and foreboding.

"I'm not cleaning this up." said James immediately.

Remus heaved another sigh and irritably snapped, "Of course not, O Great One. Why would I expect you to do anything even remotely useful?"

James flashed him a beatific smile. "Glad we have that settled. Chop chop Moony! The shelves aren't going to dust themselves you know."

Remus walked off stiffly in search of cleaning supplies, but not before biting out a bitter, "I hate you."

James just grinned.

* * *

It wasn't until the clock on the bedside table trilled, informing him that it was eight, that Sirius stopped brooding.

Buckbeak ruffled his wings irritably, annoyed at having his quiet interrupted. Sirius swept a hand across the hippogriff's neck in a calming gesture, cracking his neck in an effort to get rid of the stiffness in his muscles that had settled in after more than three hours of sitting in one position, thinking about his little brother.

Regulus Arcturus Black was nothing remarkable, or at least, that was what Sirius remembered. He remembered having to coax Regulus to come out of his room to play, remembered them playing pretend and thinking that Regulus didn't have that much of an imagination, remembered Regulus being described as a much less enthusiastic, far more well behaved Sirius without a personality.

Regulus Black was nothing remarkable, and for the majority of his former years, it had been the boy's saving grace.

Sirius remembered Regulus being constantly compared to his older brother, his cousin sisters, his uncles…in short, anyone with the last name Black. He also remembered pitying Regulus for his lack of presence, and the way their mother belittled him without even trying.

But then, he also remembered confronting his little brother about it, asking him why he let himself fade into the background, let himself be second best. Regulus had smiled and said that he preferred it that way, because he pitied _Sirius_.

Sirius hadn't understood it then, but maybe he did now, even a little bit.

He'd been re-evaluating a lot of things about his brother in the last three hours.

Regulus had never truly revealed his opinions about _anything_ , not even when he had been specifically asked for it; he'd always been vague enough that people made their own assumptions about what he believed based on what they expected him to believe, Sirius included. But in hindsight, his brother had been far shrewder than anyone had believed.

Regulus might have thought all muggleborns were scum, but he might also have thought that they needed to integrate better like Uncle Alphard had; He might have loved Quidditch as a pastime, or he might have wanted to go professional; he might have been like Hermione with her House Elf Rights, or he might have just thought that Kreacher was the only house elf that was acceptable for treating with affection.

Sirius felt hollow when he thought about the man (no, he had still been a boy when he'd died, hadn't he?) that his little brother, his little Reggie, had become.

He left his mother's old bedroom and walked down the stairs, following the smell of cooking food.

Another guilt to add to his growing pile of what-ifs, could-have-beens and should-have-dones.

He walked into the dining room, shaking away the pessimistic thoughts of how he _should have tried harder with Reggie, should have been a better big brother, should have taken Reggie with him when he ran away, could have changed his mind about joining the Death Eaters, what if—_

"Sirius, stop being a creep in the doorway and come in; Molly's cooked something that smells like Dearborn's shaving kit!"

He looked at James, took in his boyish smile and the amused light dancing in his eyes, and the pain receded, like as though a sponge was absorbing all the negativity in his mind. He put on a grin of his own, and it took far less effort than it had before today (had it only been a day since James was back?), and sat between James and Harry, where they'd saved him a seat.

He took a whiff of the quiche and said, "Nah, it smells more like Alice's handbag."

"Why do I know you two?" muttered Remus in exasperation.

Lily sighed. "Duck, I don't think _anyone_ can answer that question."

All was right in his world once more.

* * *

After the last of the dinner was cleared away and the adults had had a minor argument about who was indebted to who, Harry cleared his throat.

It was disconcerting when everyone turned to look at him, but he brushed his stage-fright aside and asked, "So have you two figured out anything about the locket yet?"

Immediately, all the noise ceased and everyone trained their eyes on James and Remus.

"It's only been a few hours, and most of that was spent making sure the library didn't give us an asthma attack, so no, nothing on that front." replied James. "What about you lot on the cleaning front?"

Mrs. Weasley looked grateful that the conversation had moved away from dangerous topics and replied enthusiastically. "We've made good progress on the drawing room, and we've nearly got another room usable for the two of you James."

Harry grimaced at that. Usable was pushing it, even by Ron's good-enough-if-it-looks-alright standards. At any rate, it looked like the five of them would have to share the same room again.

"That's alright Molly," said Lily with a smile. "I'm sure we can manage another few days of sleeping in the same room, can't we James?"

James nodded and Mrs. Weasley beamed.

Something about that beam made him want to crush it, but Harry had absolutely _no idea_ where that thought had come from. Before he could stop himself, the words started spilling out. "Mum, could you teach us occlumency?"

Ron and Hermione snapped their heads to look at Harry, wondering at his stupidity. Ron just admired his guts, and Hermione wanted to strangle him; what point was there to _secrecy_ if he asked in front of everyone?

Lily blinked. "Why would you want to learn occlumency?"

James looked on curiously, having not been present for that particular bit of the conversation that afternoon, but Remus and Sirius shared resigned looks; they'd known the minute Lily had mentioned it that the children would want to learn it—they would have too.

Harry swallowed to get rid of the sudden dryness in his throat. "Well, what you said got us thinking and, er, we don't want…"

"We don't want You-Know-Who to use us like his puppets." said Ginny fiercely, and even Mrs. Weasley couldn't bring herself to reprimand her, not after what she'd been through.

"Ginny's right," said Hermione, her voice firm. "We're targets for You-Know-Who to use—he's after Harry and we're the easiest way to him."

"Not that we mind Harry. If it means sticking with you, it doesn't matter even if we have cow's eyes painted on our foreheads." said Ron, reminding Hermione that she'd touched on a sore topic; no one could do guilt and self-blame like Harry could.

"Bullseye Ron, _bullseye_." said Hermione, hiding her blunder in correcting Ron, a favoured pastime.

"I was _trying_ not to be sexist." said Ron, although Hermione didn't know whether he genuinely thought that, or if he was just being ridiculous to get Harry's mind off of what she'd just said; another thing no one could do like Harry was _brood_.

"That's not—you are so—ugh!" groaned Hermione, not even bothering to deign that with a response.

"Thanks guys." said Harry, promising to himself that he wouldn't think about how much danger he was putting his friends in, simply by being him, until he was alone, because right now wouldn't be a great time to start brooding. Instead, he focussed on the fact that his friends were awesome, and he couldn't have asked for anyone better.

"Wait, why would Harry be Voldemort's target specifically?" asked James.

Everyone avoided the elder Potters' gazes, and Lily and James felt an extreme sense of foreboding.

"Harry?" Lily urged quietly.

Harry felt his throat closing, and it was difficult to even swallow. How would his parents take all that had happened? Last night, they'd only gotten the highlights of his third year, with a bit about Dobby, Fluffy and the Blast-Ended Skrewts (Hagrid had come up), but third year had arguably been his safest year, all things considered, and they'd only touched upon Voldemort's resurrection. So, he diverted their attention.

"You haven't answered my question yet; will you teach us occlumency?"

Lily pursued her lips, and James paled. "That bad, huh?"

"You know we're not fragile right? We can handle it." said Lily irritably.

"Which is what he's been saying all this time." stated James. "It's not fair of us to ask you for information without us extending the same courtesy to you, is that it?"

Harry hadn't been thinking that at all, but because it had turned out so well, he nodded, as though that's what he'd meant to do all along.

"Well Harry, prove it." said James.

"What?" asked Harry, blinking in surprise.

"Prove what, Mr. Potter?" asked Hermione tentatively.

James looked so utterly in control of the situation that everyone on the dining table unconsciously sat straighter, even George, who'd been experimenting with Fatigue Fondues just before dessert. He looked directly at Harry, maintaining a piercing eye-contact that made Harry wonder whether he'd done the right thing by, in essence, bargaining with James.

"Prove to me that you _deserve_ the information you so desperately want." James said. "I have known you hardly a day Harry, and I _can't_ know whether you even need to know anything about the Order. I don't have enough background information to make a sound decision on whether your need to know is actually warranted."

Sirius opened his mouth to speak in Harry's defence, but James forestalled anything he had to say. "I don't want any second-hand observations and reasonings Harry. I want you to _earn_ the knowledge on your own merit."

Harry found this incredibly unreasonable, and he was about to say something he would likely regret later, when Mrs. Weasley beat him to it.

"You can _not_ be serious James! I won't allow that; he's just a child! This is a fight he doesn't need to be a part of, no matter how much he _seems_ like he can handle it!"

Sirius turned a steely gaze at her. "Oh yeah, and you'd rather they be kept out of a war that _revolves_ around them, do you? Do you _want_ them dead?!"

Remus looked aghast, having never thought the argument that had been going on most of the summer could escalate so quickly, so soon. The two of them had had a silent pact that they wouldn't argue too much in front of the children, and yet here they were, forgetting themselves completely. This wasn't boiling point; this was overflowing from the pot.

"And you would rather they fought at the frontlines? They're barely fifteen! They don't know enough magic to cook breakfast, let alone fight Death Eaters!" retorted Mrs. Weasley, her face flushing an angry red.

"I didn't say anything about them at the frontlines, but I bet even _they_ want you to stop mollycoddling them. You're doing none of them any favours by keeping them uninformed!" yelled Sirius, his voice becoming harsher and harsher with every word.

"This is the day for blowing up isn't it?" whispered Lily to Remus bitterly.

"I can't wait for my turn then." replied Remus darkly, his own temper flaring up at the sheer pig-headedness of everyone around him.

James just watched the two of them throw barbs at each other with thinned lips, while the children didn't know _how_ to stop it, even if they wanted to.

"I'm keeping them _alive_ , which is far more than a reckless, idiotic, dark wizard spawn like you could ever accomplish!" she screamed, but then immediately regretted it because of the livid, murderous look in Sirius' eyes.

"I think that's quite enough." said James evenly, and everyone did, in fact, stop. Mrs. Weasley was avoiding Sirius' gaze completely, and Sirius was angrily glaring at the butter dish.

"This is a discussion between me and Harry and has _nothing_ to do with the rest of you, as much as you'd like to butt in." said James, and it sort of made Harry grateful that his dad wasn't going to let Mrs. Weasley or Dumbledore or _anyone_ influence his decision, because let's face it, he thought to himself bitterly, neither one of them wanted him to know anything anyway. This summer had proved that.

But then he worried about what he'd have to do to 'prove' that he deserved to be a part of the Order, the Resistance, as much if not more than half the people in it. Then there was the part of him that snidely kept whispering _haven't I done enough? Four solid years of near-death experiences and murderous psychopaths after me, and that isn't enough?_ But another, more rational voice said, _well, they weren't really there for any of that, and I haven't exactly_ told _them about it, not really, so it's not surprising that they don't know why I want to fight Voldemort, why I think I deserve to know._

"But—" Mrs. Weasley protested.

"With all due respect Molly," cut in Lily, "this is our son, and if we decide something about his life, I think that's our right. Or are you going to tell us that because we're _young_ , we don't know what's best for him, or that we _don't_ want him to survive this war, or that we don't know any better about the dangers he could face, even though you closeted yourself at home, safe and snug in the First War, while _we_ were constantly out fighting? Or that we don't know what it's like to lose people in the war, simply because no one in our families died, unlike you? Or that we're just going to let it slide that you called Sirius a dark wizard spawn without calling you out on it?"

By the end of that, Harry didn't think Lily was even talking about reasons why Molly should stay out of this discussion. Sirius looked vindicated, and James looked at Molly with sympathetic pity.

This, Harry supposed, was where he got his temper from.

"Because _that_? That was a low blow, even in the heat of a fight. Do you think we can choose who our parents are? Do you think no one here understands what we've signed up for? We, Sirius, James, Remus and I, we fought from the first signs of the last war all the way till the bitter end. We lost more friends than you've known people your whole _life_ , friends we fought with and loved and wanted to protect, and you know what? It's fucking insulting that you think you could do better than Sirius at keeping people alive, because you've done nothing but reign supreme over cleaning supplies and the kitchen while _he's_ been out there risking his neck and watching his friends _die_ so that ignorant control freaks like _you_ had the option of staying at home, like scared ninnies! You think _you_ know better about what could happen to these kids than we do? We were _there_! You think Sirius _wants_ them on the frontlines? Don't fucking kid yourself! He knows better than you _ever_ will what it's like, so don't you dare use that holier-than-thou tone with him about things _you_ don't understand!"

She took a deep calming breath, and sat down, having stood up some time during that tirade. Everyone held their collective breaths, waiting for Mrs. Weasley to recover, but clearly, James was in no mood to let that happen.

"Just because Sirius is reckless, doesn't mean he's dumb Molly. There's a difference between being impulsive on occasion, and willing to let people die because he hasn't thought something through. He's got a good head on his shoulders, and it'd be nice if you appreciated that once in a while." finished James, leaving Mrs. Weasley with a lot to chew on, and a new appreciation of exactly what had allowed Lily and James to survive the war for as long as they had, even though they'd been only seventeen when they'd started.

"Now, back to the matter at hand," said James lightly, looking at Harry. "I'm going to watch you for the next four days, till the next Order meeting, and you're going to have to _show_ me that you deserve to know what the Order does. Sound fair? You don't have to do anything extra, and if you act out of character, I'll know. I'll be evaluating you, and you'd best be ready."

Harry was still reeling just like everyone else after Lily's anger had burst forth, but he tried his best to pay attention to what his dad was saying. He wasn't too worried if he missed anything though; Hermione would go over it later anyway.

"Do we have a deal Harry?" asked James, stretching a hand out.

Harry looked at the outstretched hand and thought about it; there wasn't really anything to lose from this, and this was the first time an adult had offered an actual tangible promise to let Harry in on the action, even if it was a bit subjective. (exactly what criteria was he evaluating him on anyway?) He didn't think he'd get a chance like this again, so he didn't see any reason not to accept.

He looked at Ron and Hermione, and they both looked encouraging, even though Hermione was biting her lip in contemplation.

Seeing no opposition from his friends, he looked into his dad's hazel eyes and shook his hand.

"Deal."

* * *

 _I don't hate Molly. I don't hate Molly no matter what this chapter sounds like. It's just that I find it kind of annoying that she keeps using Sirius' recklessness as an excuse not to listen to him. He's a war veteran while she was sitting at home, and I know that it was the right decision for her because she had a young family and that it would have been extremely stupid of her to do what Sirius did because she had more to lose, but it still stands that she ought to give his opinions on things a bit more weight than she does. Lily's anger burst forth, and it'll die away just like Harry's does, James got angry on the same day and he got over it in a few minutes, Sirius blew up at Molly and vice versa, all in the same day. It just sort of happened I guess, although I didn't actually mean for it to...my characters just decided to do what they wanted ^^"_

 _I'm really sorry for the long wait! I'll try harder, even though real life is a mess right now...-_-_


	11. Reaching an Iffy Equilibrium

**Chapter 10: Reaching Out to Equilibrium**

* * *

Lily couldn't sleep.

She changed her sleeping position for the nth time, fluffing her pillow yet again. Now that her anger had cooled down, she felt mortified for the way she had behaved. She felt herself blushing as she gazed into the darkness of the room, the streetlights outside casting light onto the ceiling.

Remus grunted in his sleep, and Lily couldn't stand it any more.

She carefully got out of bed so as not to wake any of the other occupants of the room (she was _really_ looking forward to having her own room) and tiptoed towards the door.

She hadn't been looking too hard, otherwise she would have noticed that James hadn't been sleeping on his makeshift bed on the floor either.

And if she'd really been paying attention, she would have noticed that Sirius wasn't asleep either.

* * *

After the kerfuffle after dinner, everyone had gone to bed in varying states of mind.

Mrs. Weasley was oddly quiet, and the Weasley children weren't too happy with how their mother had been yelled at by Lily, yet Harry couldn't bring it in himself to get worked up over it.

Ron and Harry reached their room and said goodnight to the twins, Remus and James. The other three adults were in worlds of their own. Ginny, seeing that Hermione wanted to talk to the two boys, said she'd wait for Hermione in their room before leaving the trio to themselves for the first time since he'd come to Grimmauld Place.

"Well, let's go inside." said Hermione, eager to discuss everything that had happened today.

Shutting the door behind him, Ron walked over to his bed and sat next to Hermione.

"Well?" asked Hermione expectantly, and Harry, sitting on his own bed, had absolutely no idea what she wanted from him.

"Well what?" he asked.

"What do you think we'll have to do to 'prove' ourselves to your dad, obviously." she said impatiently.

Harry thought about this, but drew a blank.

"I reckon we're going to have to start off with telling him everything, right from the beginning to the end. We need to convince him we need in on this right? That's not going to happen if they don't see it from our point of view." Ron pointed out thoughtfully.

Hermione bit her lip in contemplation. "Well, we can't tell them _everything_ , because goodness knows we've made some pretty idiotic decisions—"

"Hold on," said Harry. "When did dad say anything about testing you two as well? I thought he was just testing me."

Hermione brushed his concerns off. "That's irrelevant Harry. 'We' or 'you', it's all the same."

Harry was slightly miffed at this, but he didn't let it show. Ron, on the other hand, had the same issue.

"Actually Hermione, there's loads of stuff Harry's done that we weren't there for. And Mr. Potter did say it was just Harry that had to prove himself."

Hermione looked at the two of them for a moment before realising where their wavelengths stopped synchronising. "That's not what I meant. Whatever Harry finds out, he'll tell us. Won't you Harry?"

Harry had half a mind to say, _Well actually, I don't think I want to, not really_. But then he brushed that petty thought away (it had been happening ridiculously frequently for some reason, these negative thoughts, but maybe that was just puberty) and nodded.

In spite of themselves, Hermione and Ron relaxed.

"Anyway, I don't think telling them about that romp in the Forbidden Forest with Aragog is a good idea." said Hermione.

"Please, the less we talk about spiders the better." muttered Ron, shuddering lightly at the memory.

Hermione and Harry exchanged a glance before biting back a smile at Ron.

"I suppose so…we could just say we figured it out…maybe play it up a bit that we took Lockhart with us, to show we actually thought about asking an adult for help." contemplated Harry.

"Yeah," snorted Ron. "And we'd best play down the fact that he was a complete dunce at basically _everything_ , even before he lost all his memories."

Hermione blushed lightly, probably at remembering her crush on Lockhart.

"But other than that, I don't think we should omit anything from second year. Well…" said Harry, before trailing off.

Ron and Hermione seemed to understand. "Ginny."

"Yeah." said Harry. "I don't know how well she remembers that year, and how she'll take it if we rehash it in front of everyone."

They all sunk into a thoughtful silence.

"We don't have to you know." said Ron suddenly. Hermione and Harry looked at him, urging him to continue.

"Well, we have to convince your dad Harry, not _everybody_. We could, or really, you could just take him to the side and tell him the story. Your mum too."

"Why didn't I think of that?" gasped Hermione.

Ron grinned at her. "We don't have any firewood!" he squeaked in a Hermione-esque way.

Harry grinned at the memory of Hermione and the Devil's Snare in first year. She was so smart that she forgot the simple things sometimes.

Come to that, so did Harry sometimes. It was good to have Ron around, just to remind them to think like normal people sometimes.

"Anyway," hurried Hermione, her cheeks flushed slightly, "That's second year sorted. I don't think there's anything particularly stupid we'd done last year…except Harry leaving everything till the last minute, but we can't really omit _that_ , can we?"

Under Hermione's pointed stare, Harry felt a pit of embarrassment in his stomach. Ron then said, "Besides, we can't really edit last year, because maybe there's something important there that they might catch on to but we thought wasn't really all that important. Better safe than sorry, in my opinion."

Seeing as there were no objections to that, the three proceeded to discuss first year. "And wasn't _that_ a mess and a half!" groaned Hermione.

Harry bit his lower lip. "I didn't think it was _that_ bad…"

"Oh Harry," said Hermione, frazzled. "There are so many things we did that year that were so _reckless_ in hindsight! That thing at the end of first year, where we rushed after what we thought was a potential _Death_ _Eater_ ; the Quidditch match where I set Professor Snape's robes on fire; _Norbert_ ; our first flying lesson where you gave in to Malfoy's taunts; the _Troll_ incident—"

"We'd do it again." said Ron solidly. "And all those things might've been reckless, but they were necessary."

"True." said Harry, agreeing completely. "Hermione, all those things were pretty brave for eleven year olds, and it just shows that we're willing to do all of that, that we _can_ give it our all if we're involved."

"But," said Hermione. "I don't think they'll see it like that Harry."

Harry got a grimly determined look in his eyes. "Whether they see it like that or not doesn't matter. It's what happened, and it's what made us who we are. They didn't seem that put out with me blowing up Aunt Marge, and I had a really flimsy excuse for that compared to the things you just mentioned. It'll have to be fine."

"Couldn't have said it better mate." said Ron, just as determined.

"Oh alright!" said Hermione finally. "But I just remembered the Polyjuice Potion and the Duel Club and Nick's Deathday Party from second year!"

"Now that you mention it…" muttered a pale Ron.

Harry felt a bit reluctant to let on to his parents that they'd illegally brewed an NEWT level potion, essentially kept Crabbe and Goyle hostage for an hour, snuck into the Slytherin Common Room, committed identity fraud and turned Hermione into a mutant cat.

Everything else though…

"We're just going to have to hope for the best." said Harry, and both Ron and Hermione exchanged a glance before nodding in support.

Harry was grateful he had such awesome friends, who called him reckless and still did everything with him anyway.

Ginny suddenly barrelled into the room, and the three started. "Mum's wondering where you are Hermione. I told her you were in the toilet, and she's just gone to check the twins' room. I expect she's coming here next."

Hermione got up and gave both the boys a meaningful glance before the girls bid them good night and left quietly.

Ron got up and switched off their lights as Harry took off his glasses and put them on the side-table, before both of them got under their bedcovers. They waited with bated breath for Mrs. Weasley's footsteps to walk past their corridor. They could see her silhouette in the door, but she didn't come in immediately.

Harry thought her shoulders were a lot more slumped than he'd ever seen them before, although that might just have been his blurred vision (but he didn't really think so). She sighed, came into the room to give Ron a kiss on his forehead and smooth Harry's hair from his forehead, before sighing again.

It was really difficult to keep still and pretend to be asleep, but they managed. She left as silently as she'd come in, and they waited until her footsteps stopped and a door opened, signifying that she'd gone to her own room.

Harry felt a warmth in his heart every time he remembered Mrs. Weasley doing this when he'd lived at the Burrow most every summer, and he felt sorry for her; his mum had really ripped into Mrs. Weasley, who'd done nothing but love him as one of her own from the moment he'd been declared Ron's best friend. But then, Harry remembered recent events, and how she kept mollycoddling them all, and how she called Sirius unforgivable things, and instead of feeling angry like he had when it had happened, he just felt tired. It was, he thought, very difficult to stay angry with family, really it was.

"Harry?" whispered Ron in the dark.

"Yeah?" replied Harry, his whisper a tad closer to his normal quiet voice.

"I'm angry with your mum." he stated matter-of-factly, but with a hint of nervousness. "It wasn't on, what she said to mum."

Harry sighed into the darkness. "That's okay Ron. I don't blame you."

Ron relaxed into the bed, turning to face Harry. "How likely is it, do you think, for Mr. Potter to let us into the Order without Dumbledore giving the go ahead? I mean, I know he's your dad and is in charge of whether you're in the Order or not, but Dumbledore _is_ the leader."

Harry found he couldn't answer that, because that was true. James had only just arrived yesterday; how on earth did he plan on convincing Dumbledore to let Harry in on the action, when even a Dementor attack couldn't?

Harry rolled onto his side, mulling this over. "I don't know Ron, but I get the feeling…if we pass this hurdle, even if Dumbledore doesn't let us in, dad's going to tell us everything that's happening in the meetings anyway."

Ron hummed in agreement. "I guess you're right. We'll see how it goes...good night Harry."

"'Night Ron."

A few minutes later, the tiring day caught up with Ron and snores filled the room. Harry though, couldn't stop mulling over the days' events, and how he was going to convince his parents that he was worthy. He wondered if perhaps he'd done it too quickly. Should he have waited? It had only been a day after all…maybe this was too soon to get his parents to be this involved with him.

And then there was the matter of the guilt Harry was feeling at getting them back into a war as soon as they'd come back to life. The rest of the world had had a reprieve of thirteen years, and yet here were James and Lily, jumping from the First War right into the Second, without a pause or break to acclimatise themselves to it. Harry wondered whether they even fully comprehended that they were fourteen years in the future, because he couldn't imagine himself being so _okay_ with it as they seemed to be.

And then there was the matter of whether they truly were his parents, because the sliver of doubt at this…this miracle would always exist.

He tossed and turned, perhaps for hours after Ron had fallen asleep. He thought he heard footsteps, but they were so light that he thought it might be Kreacher, the reason Mrs. Weasley had locked the door when she'd left (they could still open it from the inside when they awoke, Ron had explained to him yesterday), and he must have flitted in and out of consciousness, because he didn't know whether it was a dream when he thought he saw his own silhouette in the doorway smiling at him, or if it had really happened and he was going insane.

His mind kept spinning thoughts, mixing them and turning them around, never quietening so that he could have a restful sleep (and he'd need it, if the morning was going to be anything like the last one).

Harry didn't know why, but he snapped out of his sleepy haze, sitting bolt upright in the bed and squinting at the darkness in paranoid suspicion.

"Still not asleep?" a soft voice whispered in the darkness, and Harry quickly grabbed his glasses and jammed them onto his face, the world coming into focus, before noticing that there was someone standing in the doorway.

"Mum?" he whispered back.

And so it was. Her red hair seemed to glow under the lamp light in the corridor, like fire embers, and her eyes glowed like a cat's in the dark. She was dressed in a really large shirt and extremely baggy pants, and the first thing Harry thought to ask her was, "Whose clothes are you wearing?"

She looked down at her attire while Harry berated himself for asking such a stupid question, when this was the first time since she'd returned from the dead that he'd been alone with her. Ron the snorer didn't count.

"Sirius' old clothes, from when he was fourteen." she said, a bit put out at that. She wasn't _small_ , but Sirius was a giant compared to her, even at fourteen!

Harry found this inexplicably funny, and then a bit odd. He'd heard from multiple sources that seeing a woman in a man's clothes implied that they had _that_ kind of relationship, but he was absolutely certain there wasn't one, so he shook those thoughts off and chuckled lightly. He'd never known that Sirius and his mum were so close too; he'd thought they only got along because of his dad, but maybe it was just because it was a necessity at this point.

Oh well. He'd figure out their relationship soon enough, he suspected.

She gave him a small smile and asked, "Care to walk with me for a bit? I'd like to talk."

And Harry, feeling wide awake and really eager to finally speak to his mother alone for the first time in nearly fourteen years, slipped out of bed, put on his slippers, and left the room.

* * *

When Lily had left her room, she'd intended on apologising to Molly for her, while justified, a bit over-the-top reaction. When she'd reached Molly's door however, not only was it locked, but she could also hear a man's snores from within.

Lily hadn't properly met Mr. Weasley, suspecting that he'd arrived late that night and had left early in the morning (although, since she'd slept till the afternoon, he could have just as easily have left for work at twelve noon and she would have missed him), but she felt that it would not only be rude of her to intrude, it was also quite stupid of her to think that anyone would be awake at—she quickly checked one of the wall clocks—three in the morning.

Peering out of a window, she could already see the sky lightening, and she sighed. Nights never lasted very long in the summer.

But it was more than that.

It was the fact that, whichever way you looked at it, her mind still expected it to be cool and crisp outside, the weather inching closer and closer to winter than to summer. October the 31st…

She missed her house. She missed the burnt orange furnishings, and the multi-coloured kitchen wall, and her marble countertops, and her creaking stairs, and her squishy bed with its warming charm and six pillows and four cushions, and her lumpy sofa with its tasselled cushions, and the red-and-gold stringy rug with a tickling charm on its surface (a wedding present from Marlene), and her talking teapot (a gift from Bathilda Bagshot), and the curtains that she and James had spent _hours_ trying to find, and the rubber duck in her bathtub, and her bathtub, and her sink and her mirror and her _toothbrush_ and _comb_ and _clothes_ and _books_ and _potion-making kit_ and her mother's old cookbook and the lint-covered muffler Harry had drooled all over last Christmas and the terrible muggle singing birthday card that had James so utterly fascinated, and the ridiculous romance novels Remus bought her on his own birthday, and the sweater-that-would-never-be-worn-because-that-colour-is-hideous that Sirius had gotten her for Alice's birthday (don't ask), and…

She wanted to go _home_.

…she wanted…

Her eyes were stinging and an antique mirror in the corner told her her face was a splotchy red, and the lump in her throat wouldn't go away no matter how many times she swallowed.

She moved away from the Weasley's door and ran down a flight of stairs, where she slumped down and cried and cried.

Because it _hurt_.

And the choked sobs and the pleading with the gods and the muffled whimpers and the wretched sighs would be heard by no one, just like years ago, when two young boys had cried in the lonely darkness.

Number 12 Grimmauld Place absorbed Lily Potter's tears, heard her pain, and remained silent.

* * *

James rubbed his bloodshot eyes, and then slapped himself to keep awake before going back to the book he was reading.

He'd been in the Library for—he glanced at the clock and saw that it read a few minutes past four in the morning—more than six hours now, looking for something that would explain why Regulus Black would give his life away for a locket, and why Voldemort wanted to guard it well enough that he even tested its defences using a house elf.

He knew there was something important about that locket, some deep instinct within urging him to stay away from its glittering emerald 'S' and solid gold egg-shaped charm. Coupled with the fact that it was an ancient lost artefact and that Remus had flinched when near it (his primal instincts were far more honed than his were, of that he had no doubt), it just screamed sinister and evil.

He'd found nothing on _why_.

He rubbed his eyes again.

There was another reason why he was doing this in the night, and it had entirely to do with the fact that he couldn't sleep.

Every time his eyes closed, all he could see was Voldemort's cold red eyes and skeletal fingers pointing a wand at him and mouthing a cruelly cheerful _Avada Kedavra_ , the blood pulsating in his ears ensuring that the voice distorted and the adrenaline pumping through his veins screaming at him, telling him that he hadn't given Lily and Harry enough time to _run!_

He'd been wandless, defenceless, and the most he'd done to delay Voldemort was to fling a dungbomb at his face and miss, splattering his glittering black robes instead. He'd also wandlessly transfigured Harry's pram into a garden ornament and levitated it over Voldemort's head, but it hadn't taken much time for the Dark Lord to smash it and glare at him, because, once smashed, the garden ornament fragments transformed into little flying cherubs.

 _That_ had delayed the noseless tyrant, but it still hadn't been enough.

Because Lily had died.

He could read between the lines, and they weren't exactly trying to hide it from him, but by Merlin had he failed.

And if it wasn't visions of dying and failing, it was the memory of Sirius in the dark laughing hysterically and harshly barking that they weren't real, that he'd 'finally gone mad', and the way Remus couldn't continue looking at them for more than a few seconds before his hands started trembling.

And if not that, then it was visions of Peter as Harry had described him, a fat balding man with rat-like features.

The Peter he remembered hadn't ever once been called 'rat-like'.

Was that a side-effect of prolonged usage of their animagus abilities? Did they start acting, thinking, _behaving_ , like their animal counterparts the longer they stayed in that form?

Because if so, then it wasn't just Peter that had become more like his animal.

Sirius had spent twelve years on again and off again as a dog, and the way he moved sometimes reflected that. The way he tilted his head or nuzzled James in his sleep, as though he genuinely was a dog, was endearing and _disturbing_.

Remus had always worried he would become the wolf.

James was worried his best friend had become the dog.

And his Peter had _become_ the rat.

The rat he'd always been so proud to be, because it was something he'd managed on his own, had done as well, if not better, than his more intellectual friends.

James smiled sadly at this. Peter had been the first out of the three of them to manage a complete animagus transformation. James had theorised that it was because he was the most uncomfortable in his own skin, but he'd never said it out loud. That doesn't mean Sirius and Remus hadn't thought the same.

Peter had by no means been dumb. In fact, he was above average in most things, including academics. But with friends like James 'He Who Defied Logic' Potter, Sirius 'Might As Well Be God' Black, and Remus 'The Walking Library' Lupin, Peter just didn't stand out as well as he would have done had he been in _any other year group_.

Their year, even by McGonagall's strict standards, had been exceptional. Gifted in academics, talented in sports, dab hands at practicals, charming without trying, and witty beyond measure—his year group had been brilliant by _everyone's_ standards.

It was a mark of true genius that every single one of them—Gryffindor, Slytherin, Hufflepuff and Ravenclaw—all twenty-seven of them, had been in the Slug Club.

All except Peter.

Their entire year group was too brilliant, and even with Peter's 3 E's, 3 A's, 2 P's and 1 O, he was the bottom of their barrel.

In any other year, he would have been near the top. In their year, he'd been scraping bottom.

James sighed. His Peter must have felt it too, no matter how hard all three of them had tried to never let it touch him.

And so James had skimmed book after book about Dark Magic, Soul Binding Alchemy, Blood Sacrifices, Transmogrification Rituals, Runic Postulations, Mind Merging and etc. for the last six hours, having only taken one break to stretch his legs and peer into Harry's room (which had been locked, but a quick Alohomora solved that crisis), giving himself the peace of mind only physically seeing proof that his son had survived could give him.

He thought Harry might have seen him when he'd been shifting his position in his sleep, but when he'd smiled, Harry had closed his eyes once more, so he didn't think much of it.

He straightened his posture once he reached the end of yet another useless book (something about Magical Creatures and using their life essence to bolster family magic hereditation—apparently, Unicorn Blood, forcefully taken, could keep a stillborn child from passing into the afterlife for enough time to procure a dead body to bind his soul onto—who knew?), and sighed.

The next Order meeting was in three days.

He had three days to figure out what this locket signified, before taking it to Albus and having the old man have a go. He could, he supposed, give the locket to him right now and be done with that headache, but it wasn't in James' nature to give up so easily and depend on someone else.

He would try his best to find the answers himself.

And if he still couldn't find anything, he'd let Albus try his hand at solving this conundrum.

James refrained from asking for his help immediately because that's what _everybody_ did, and Albus had once told him that he hated the ungodly pressure the expectation that he'd find all the answers gave him.

He was old; James knew more intimately than most how difficult it was to be old—his parents had been _very_ old people when he'd been born, and he'd always felt terrible burdening them unnecessarily. Messy pranks didn't count. They made both his parents laugh and the house elves cleaned it up anyway, if James himself wasn't punished with the task—so he treated Albus the same way he treated his parents.

James blinked a couple of times, cleaned his glasses on one of Orion Black's old sleeping robes, and picked up the next book— _The Art of Defying Apollo: Theoretical Applications of the Sun in Unimaginably Dark Ways_ —and began reading.

 _'The sun, the chariot of Apollo, has long cut its path across the sky. From musings and axioms, it has been concluded that the sun has the energy to build an undead army, powered by the rays cast upon this muggle-infested Gaia. Another application would be to make the sun's rays inject magic into humans, leading to an unaccountably rapid growth in localised areas of their body, rapidly killing them off. The methods listed below have had favourable results…they refer to it now as Melanoma…'_

* * *

 _I meant to do more in this chapter...oh well. Thoughts? I took liberties with intelligence levels, and I would dearly love it if someone told me what they thought of how I portrayed Peter. Was Lily's breakdown understandable, or was it too scattered? If it helps, the beginning of Harry's scene happened first, then the first Lily scene, then the second Lily scene, then the end of Harry's scene, and then James' scene, chronologically._

 _I genuinely don't believe that Peter was talentless, and I can't believe that they would have ever been friends if Peter was unintelligent. Peter was, in my opinion, above average, because someone who was unintelligent would never have been trusted with the location of Godric's Hollow, foolproof plan or not. Peter is the character we only ever see through Sirius, Ron and Harry's hate-filled lenses, or the nostalgic never-talk-ill-of-the-dead point of views of other characters. He's one of the three characters in the series that switched sides, and none of them were seen in a good light. Snape and Regulus were redeemed, but Peter? Reviled until the bitter end, with not a hint given to us of what he was before his twelve year stint as Ron's pet rat._

 _The reasons for why he switched sides, why he stayed a rat and didn't go looking for Voldemort, why he went to Voldemort in the first place,_ why _the marauders ever befriended him...none of that's been discussed at all, and honestly? I want to know why. Because he was a marauder before he became the rat bastard, a guy who must have ostensibly accepted Remus' condition just like Sirius and James did, must have felt inferior of them far before he defected, because come on, he made it through **puberty,** where his self-esteem would have been at its lowest and inferiority complex at its worst, with that friendship still intact, well into their adulthood._

 _I'm not justifying what he did. I'm justifying who he used to be. And that's what James is doing too._

 _Also, the book mentioned? Totally made up. Why did I explain melanoma in terms of a wizards' torture technique/ method of getting rid of muggles? Because why not. They must have done **something** to muggles over the years of hatred, right?_


	12. So Brainstorm-Baking Is?

**Chapter 11: So Brainstorm-baking is...?**

* * *

Harry slowly plodded along next to his mother, their footsteps matching muffled thump for muffled thump. Lily didn't quite know what she wanted to talk to her son about, mostly just _wanting_ to talk to him properly.

To her, he'd been nothing more than an infant the last time she'd seen him and now…now he was almost a man.

Lily didn't quite feel ready for that.

They walked into yet another dimly lit corridor, and Lily motioned for Harry to follow her through a door.

"You've been in Grimmauld Place before?" asked Harry, curious about the way Lily seemed quite at ease wandering around the dark, creepy house.

"Absolutely never." she said, flashing him a grin. "I'm just really good at pretending I know what I'm doing."

Harry, jarred by the honesty and cavalier tone, huffed a laugh almost by surprise. "Doesn't that just about sum up my life."

Lily threw him a curious look, before muttering, "Corn cob on a cobbled cove!"

Harry asked, "What?" and she pointed at the cobweb she'd walked into, her hair covered with the sticky threads. "And the worst thing is, Sirius uses Head & Shoulders. My hair doesn't do well with Head & Shoulders."

Harry looked bemused, wondering why on earth shampoo brands actually mattered, but thought that maybe this was a girl thing and pretended he understood.

They walked through another door, and Harry was quite certain they'd walked into a really old study. However, unlike the rest of the house, this study looked less infested with all manner of creepy-crawlies and rodents. The walls were the same damp velvety green, the sofas were the same antique black and faded silver brocade, the wooden furniture was as consistently rosewood as the rest of the house, the obligatory three cobweb-covered crystal chandeliers were sparkling sinisterly, and the display cases were covered with dust and jewels.

Lily took out her wand and muttered a charm that cleared the dust away from one of the sofas, plopping down on one and motioning for Harry to sit next to her.

"How did you know where this room was?" he asked, sitting down in such a way that his back didn't touch the rather suspicious-looking stains on the backrest.

Lily hummed a bit and then said, "This used to be Sirius' little brother's study." At his surprised look, she continued, "Well, there are quite a few studies in this house, but this was the one Sirius said that Regulus used most often. He showed us around a bit before bed."

Harry looked around more closely, and this time, via the dim lighting, he could see the books on one of the tables, and recognised some of them as ones that he had copies of as well. Quills and blank parchment were neatly arranged on the dusty table, and Harry felt a certain pang of sadness he couldn't quite explain as he saw a half-written letter just lying there, the ink pot having been left open and dried up over the years.

It was like a life snuffed out in the middle of saying a sentence.

"How old was he when he died?" he asked quietly, eyes not moving from the spidery handwriting on the aged parchment, which seemed to fade away the longer he stared at it.

"Regulus?" his mother asked, staring at her son and feeling so _proud_ of him for feeling so deeply for someone he'd never known. "I think he was eighteen. He joined the Death Eaters when he was still at Hogwarts, but he didn't last very long. And now we know why."

Harry clenched his fists tightly. _That could have been anyone in our year. Anyone. Parkinson, Nott, Malfoy, Bulstrode…anyone of them could have been our Regulus Black. Voldemort has no qualms about using children in this fight, and they're all being utterly_ stupid _and pretending he isn't back!_

Lily could see Harry's shoulders tense with emotion, but she couldn't see his green eyes flash a tell-tale crimson. If she had, she wouldn't have honestly known what to do about it.

"Hey," she said, placing a gentle hand on his shoulder. "He died fighting for what was right, in the end. Feel proud that he found his way back home, even if no one knew about it until now. There's no use getting worked up over it; what we do is fight to stop something like that from happening ever again."

Harry nodded tightly and said, "No more kids like Regulus."

Lily looked at him sadly and said, "Isn't that what you want though? Joining the Order means _being_ a kid like Regulus. Younger, in fact, because you're only fifteen."

"That's different." he said, and he knew it to be true, but he couldn't quite verbalise it and it was _frustrating._

His mother hummed again, and then said, "I know what you mean."

It was the sincerity in her voice that got him to calm down, because it was now alright if he didn't have the words – she understood anyway, in the way only Ron and Hermione had before.

"Let's talk about something else though." she said, keen to get off this topic and onto greener pastures. "Tell me about what it was like growing up with Petunia."

Harrys mind drew a blank as he registered the question. He opened and closed his mouth a couple of times, and then swallowed because his mouth had dried up like a puddle in the Namib Desert.

Lily noticed her son's reaction to the question and promptly began wondering what she'd said wrong. "Harry?"

He jolted a bit, and then fixed a smile on his face. "What's there to tell, really? It was like growing up anywhere else. I went to primary school, then got my Hogwarts letter, and then I went to Hogwarts."

Lily frowned and then chuckled at her own stupidity. "You know Harry, I grew up with Petunia. It can't have been easy for you to grow up with her. I mean, I was just her sister, but she was your guardian wasn't she?"

Harry blinked at the self-deprecating tone, and then wondered just how he'd forgotten that his mother _knew_ Aunt Petunia, knew her like no one else in the world did, because _of course_ they lived together.

Although Harry couldn't really imagine someone as bright and beautiful and _wonderful_ as his mother living under the same roof as horse-faced Aunt Petunia.

"I can't imagine a younger Aunt Petunia, to be honest." he said.

She smiled at him and said, "She wasn't always like she is now you know. Or well, I suppose, she wasn't always like she was fourteen years ago, although from the looks of it, I don't think she's changed much…"

"Probably not." Harry allowed, a small smile forming on his mouth, unbeckoned.

She let out a few chuckles before saying, "Well, believe it or not, she was a brilliant elder sister. She wasn't like the other girls in my neighbourhood, who thought I was a baby and wouldn't play with me. No, she used to play with me even though she was older and could _easily_ have fit in with the other girls." She took a breath. "I don't think I ever thanked her for that."

Harry, understandably stunned, asked, "What happened? I genuinely can't imagine Aunt Petunia being _nice_!"

"Magic happened." said Lily, her face showing that she'd long since accepted this fact and moved on. "When I first started manifesting magic, she told me to hide it, and then called me a freak. Our relationship hasn't been very good ever since, though I've _tried_."

Harry gaped. Without meaning to, he said, "She called you a freak too?" Then, he backtracked, "I mean, um, you were her sister. Hagrid once said that she was jealous of you, but if you were _sisters_ , then…"

Lily had noticed Harry's slip up, and the shrivelled up hope at rekindling the bond with her elder sister flickered out of existence.

"Jealousy is a very corrosive thing Harry, and it makes the best of us turn into incorrigible monsters. It takes a truly brave soul to be able to accept their shortcomings and move past it.* Petunia was never that brave."

Harry mulled over this and then said, "Wait, you've tried to make up with her?"

Lily nodded, then got a mischievous grin on her face.

"James asked me to get married to him when we were seventeen, and I thought we were too young, so I told him that he needed my sister's approval first."

Harry looked worried for his father, even though it was only a story. He'd never heard this before, and he was really excited to. "He agreed?"

Lily scoffed. "Of course he agreed. Your father, Harry, is an idiot."

Harry laughed, and Lily smiled. "So he set up a luncheon with Petunia and her then-fiancé, Vernon. Don't ask me _how_ he convinced Petunia, because I'd been trying for _months_. It's just one of those things that make me want to bash your father's brains out."

Harry was really getting into this story, moving closer to Lily, who looked to be in a world of her own, seeing the story she was describing play out in her mind's eye.

"We came to the muggle café all dressed up, James having absolutely no idea what the _meaning_ of colour coordination was, and they were already there. Petunia was wearing that weird salmon dress that she thinks flatters her figure (and James assures me that we should continue letting her think it does, for everyone's collective happiness) and Vernon looked about ready to pop with the number of 'fashionable' layers he was wearing in the middle of July. Already, I could tell it was going to go well."

Lily's dry tone made Harry bite his lips to stop him from erupting, because _Merlin_ , he could just picture it now!

"James immediately introduced himself and then continued standing, well after everyone had sat down. I remember Vernon asking him what he was doing, and James saying that it was 'proper' to let the highest ranking one sit first, and he was just politely waiting for everyone else to realise their 'mistake'. That didn't go down well with the potential in-laws. I don't think I've ever seen _anyone_ go quite as purple as Vernon did, and Petunia's face was so pinched I'm surprised her face ever managed to smooth out!"

Harry stopped bothering to hide his laughter. "What kind of joke is that? Sounds like something Malfoy would say, if he had a decent bone in his body."

Lily smiled wryly. "It wasn't a joke Harry. James genuinely _meant_ it. In hindsight it was funny, but at the time, it was _mortifying_."

Harry realised that maybe his dad wasn't a blood traitor. Which made him question what on earth being a blood traitor entailed, because if his dad believed in the pureblood etiquette thing, and he'd still married a _muggleborn_ …

 _I'll have to ask Ron when he wakes up_. he thought, before saying, "So what happened then?"

"Well," Lily continued, "we finally got around to talking, and Petunia and I discussed wedding dresses in a semi-civilised fashion, but then Vernon went purple again and called James a pompous oaf, which, you know, he _was_ , but I was his girlfriend, so I couldn't really let that slide. So I told Vernon to apologise, in the nicest way mind you, and James just said, well, he said something about broomsticks and Petunia went _livid_ , and they both stormed out of the café without waiting for their orders."

"Wait," said Harry, shocked that Uncle Vernon would ever leave any establishment without _food_. "They left before they had something to eat? Dad must have made them _really_ mad."

Lily nodded. "Yeah, and all James could say at the end of it all was 'Merlin Lily, are all muggles that high strung or is it just your family?' and I was so mad at him, I took the glass of iced tea the waiter had brought us and dumped it over his head. And he just blinked at me and said, 'Story of my life when you're involved.'"

Harry tried, he really did try, but he couldn't _not_ laugh at the look of disgust on his mother's face. Lily's lips twitched upwards and she said, "But yeah, we've both tried to mend burnt bridges, but Petunia stopped responding to us after a while. I think the last thing I sent to her was a heartfelt rendition of how cute you were and how much I wished our mum could have lived to see you, and she sent us a vase for Christmas, no card attached. It was the closest thing to comforting she'd done since I was seven."

Lily looked rather wistful and sad, and Harry didn't know what to do. So he asked, mindful of the potential landmine he was stepping on but disregarding it in favour of indulging his curiosity, "Your mum? My grandmother?"

Lily looked at her boy, his face eager and eyes sparkling with wonder and curiosity, and she fell in love with her baby all over again. "Yeah, Poppy Evans, and my dad, Harry. You were named after him."

Harry felt a flush of happiness at this, for being linked to a family member he didn't even know. "What were they like?"

Lily bit her lip in thought, and if Hermione had seen it, she would have instantly likened it to Harry's own thoughtful gesture. "Well, mum was a bit…not speaking ill of the dead or anything, but she was a bit ditzy. She married really young, and she dropped out of school as well, to marry dad, but she never regretted it. She treated Petunia's hatred of me as though it was a phase, and she told me to bring home _more_ boys, because she was afraid I'd turn out to be a lesbian or something."

Harry choked on his own spit. " _What?_ "

Lily laughed. "Yeah, she was a character alright. But she was also the only one in the family who took one look at James and immediately liked him. Not even _I_ did. She'd been knitting your baby-wear ever since my sixth year when James sent her a letter asking for permission to court me. I thought it was the daftest thing _ever_ , but apparently Sirius had 'reminded him' that maybe the reason I was spurning his advances was because he hadn't done it 'properly' or some rubbish. They'd been in touch ever since, and the amount I screeched at her for ever bringing _that boy_ up...if you didn't already know Harry, your father and I didn't have the best start to our relationship, owing to the fact that he was an idiot."

Lily shook her head in fond exasperation and Harry grinned. He couldn't have described what it felt like to do this after _years_ of yearning and yearning, hoping one day he'd see them again and they'd sit just like this and talk about trivial memories so that he could _know_ them, even if he'd tried.

But that was okay because he didn't need to. Lily hugged him lightly and said, "But daddy was another deal entirely. I sometimes half thought he was magical himself, what with how he instinctively knew what was and what wasn't magical, and the fact that he was just plain barmy. He used to read my textbooks to better help me with my homework. He was pretty old when he got married. Mum was his second wife, you see. The first one had run away with some other guy and taken all his hard-earned savings, so mum marrying him was really a stroke of sheer 'what the heck?'. I think he always liked me more than Petunia, which was another reason that Petunia probably hated me. Dad just said she was far too screechy and girly for him, and sometimes I took insult to that."

Harry frowned. "That's not very nice, even if it was true. She was his _daughter_."

Lily nodded. "Yeah, but dad was really blunt, and sometimes it was a bad thing, but most of the time, you could rely on him to never lie to you. He was honest, and intelligent too. He wasn't from a very well-off family, so he couldn't have a proper education really, but he'd tried his best with what he'd had. He was a mechanic, and Petunia was ever so ashamed of him. But to me, he worked hard, and that was all that mattered."

Lily took a deep breath, and she had a few tears in her eyes that she wiped away softly. "They would have loved you. Really they would have, and not just because you're their grandson either."

Harry felt that this was probably the greatest compliment he'd ever been given.

"How did they die?" he asked quietly.

Lily paused for a moment, looking for the right words. "Mum had gone to Marseille on a trip with some of her friends, and some men had walked into the bar they were at and shot twenty one people. Mum was one of the fatalities. I don't think they've caught whoever did it either, but it was a purely muggle incident, Sirius checked.** When dad heard, well, he'd already had a pretty weak heart and he'd had a stroke only the year before (his drinking probably didn't help, really), and when he heard, he was hospitalised and died a few weeks after."

Frowning, Harry stopped himself from feeling disappointed and strangely empty. _I didn't even know them. What am I getting sad about?_

But he couldn't help it, because his mum was sad about it, and it hurt her, and they were his grandparents and he wished he'd known them. But that, he felt, was a bit selfish. _I already got my parents, and that wasn't really supposed to happen anyway. Don't be ungrateful by asking for more._

He hugged him mother and said, "That must have been hard."

Lily laughed and looked at him with a watery smile. "Very, though I'll have you know, you're as bad as James when it comes to comforting someone."

Harry blushed. "But it's okay," she said softly, "You're both _my_ emotionally stunted men."

And it might have been the blush, but he felt very warm at her words.

* * *

Lily and Harry talked a bit more before Harry let out a yawn and tried to stifle it unsuccessfully.

"Time for bed, I think." said Lily, getting up from the sofa and reading one of the old magical clocks on the wall. "Merlin!" she exclaimed. "It's six in the morning!"

Harry looked put out. "Is there any point going to bed? We all have to be up by eight anyway."

Lily bit her lip and said, "Oh fine, I suppose we should get changed and head to the kitchen. Maybe we can start making breakfast as well."

Harry nodded and then blurted, probably because he was tired, "Isn't that Mrs Weasley's job?"

Lily gave him a disapproving gaze. "It's no one's job Harry. We're all living together, so we all have to help out, and that includes the cooking as well as the cleaning. Honestly, her _job_ …"

Harry, properly chastised, exited the room and promised to meet her in the kitchen after he'd finished changing.

Lily made her way back to Sirius' room, a smile on her tired face and a bounce in her step that hadn't been there before.

 _I spent three hours talking to my son. My son. Holy Helga, he is_ perfect _!_

He was kind, polite, sassy _and_ a genuine delight to talk to. He was curious and disarmingly charming without meaning to be, and he was adorable and sweet—

 _My baby has grown up so much…_ and Lily couldn't help but be sad that she'd missed it all. So many years of her baby growing up, and she'd missed every single second that had turned him into the masterpiece he was now.

But she shook away those sad thoughts and instead focussed on how much time she had with him _now_ , because she was supposed to be dead, really, and this was a miracle that she would cherish wholeheartedly. Because her baby wasn't a man yet, and she had time to see that happen now.

She slowly tiptoed back into Sirius' room and noticed that, while Remus had once again stolen all of James' sheets from the _other corner of the room_ and Sirius had starfished onto her side of the bed as well, her husband was nowhere in sight.

 _Maybe he noticed I wasn't there and went to look for me?_ she thought, deciding to head down to the kitchen, because that's where everyone would be eventually.

She rooted through Sirius' old cupboard and took out some ancient-looking star-spangled plum robes that could pass for feminine if one squinted. _That'll do_.

She quickly changed into them, brushed her teeth with one of the toothbrushes James had transfigured yesterday, combed her hair with Sirius' comb (no one took care of their hair better than teenage Sirius. Not even middle-aged Sirius.) and put her hair in a ponytail, using a piece of thread to tie it up.

Feeling much more awake after washing her face, she climbed down the stairs and went into the kitchen, Harry having beaten her to it.

"Oh, mum, it looks like we're not the only ones that had a sleepless night." he said, an amused lilt to his voice.

Throwing him a questioning look, she peered into the kitchen and saw…

"James, exactly how many more scones are you going to bake?" she asked exasperatedly.

Plate after plate piled high with scones and cookies sat on nearly every surface of Grimmauld Place's spacious kitchen, her husband preparing the batter for yet another batch of—she looked closer—chocolate chip cookies, reading an old book that looked to be a few breaths away from falling apart.

Harry grinned in amusement as his father didn't even register his mother's presence, kneading the dough and muttering to himself.

"Dad!" he half-yelled.

It had the desired effect of catching James' attention, and for a moment, he blinked at the two of them, his eyes uncomprehending and drifting back from whatever plane they had been at previously.

"Exactly how out of it are you love?" asked Lily, stepping into the heavenly buttery smelling kitchen. She picked up a scone on the way to her husband and bit into it. "And how many more of these are you going to make?"

Harry tentatively stepped into the kitchen as well and tried a cookie, which basically melted in his mouth.

James seemed to have finally regained his senses and said rapidly, "I'm brainstorm-baking. Also, I might be slightly hysterical. Also, good morning! Sleep well? What time is it?"

Lily peered at the book he was reading and her head started spinning because of the tiny letters. "How can you _read_ that? It's six in the morning and yeah, you look kind of frenetic."

Harry looked at the book as well, and tried to read some of it but realised that it was all in French. "You know French?"

James nodded twitchily. "Yeah, my mother was French. Or was it my dad? Or maybe it was my cousin? Or maybe I learned it for fun? Or…I don't know anymore, but I know French-kissing. And French. Although I don't know how I know how to French-kiss…or how to kiss…did I ever practise that, or did I just know how? What were we talking about again?"

Harry looked completely weirded out and Lily sighed fondly. "You didn't sleep a wink last night, did you?"

James smiled at her, and if it was a bit too wide to be normal, well. Lily was used to it, what with how many sleepless nights they'd both had over the years. "No, I couldn't, and when I could, I was too into it to bring myself to leave, you know?"

"Too into what?" asked Harry.

James turned to him with a snap. "Why would Regulus, self-centred, arrogant, self-serving Regulus, give up his life for a locket? What's so special about that locket? Why would Voldemort want to hide it? Why would he use a _house elf_ to test out the defences? Why wouldn't he keep it closer to his own person if it was that important to him?"

Harry gaped at his dad, and Lily put a hand on his shoulder. "Alright James, calm down. And I don't know. What are your theories?"

James took a deep breath and shook his head to stop his eyes from blinking asleep. "After a _lot_ of thinking, I've narrowed it down to it being a powerful artefact, but not the locket itself, but something he's _done_ to the locket. But _what_? It has to be dark, it has to be something he's afraid people will look at and recognise…so what? What is it that he's afraid we'll see and try to take away? Or is it just a specific someone he's trying to hide it from?"

"Dumbledore?" asked Harry.

James and Lily looked at him and James nodded. "Yes, that sounds about right. So what would _Dumbledore_ know that has Voldie all in a tizzy?"

Lily shrugged. "We could just ask him."

James waved her off. "Yeah, of course we will, but I'd like to know now, without burdening him with yet another conundrum to solve. As it is, it took us three years to figure out that Voldemort's main aim was immortality and—" he cut himself off abruptly.

"What?" asked Harry, confused. Why had James stopped mid-sentence? Lily looked just as confused, and then James snapped the book shut.

"I'm not going to find anything in here, but I've narrowed down the search." he said, a beatific smile on his face. "Thank you!"

"You're…welcome?" Harry blinked at the sudden change in mood.

"Now if you'll excuse me…" said James, before his head slammed onto the counter.

"Dad!" Harry asked, shocked.

"It's alright Harry. James' mind just decided to let him go to sleep, now that he's made a breakthrough." said Lily, smiling down at her odd husband and brushing some strands of hair out of his face, taking off his glasses and putting them on the side.

"Want to help me set the table and put the extras back in the oven?" she asked.

Harry nodded and together, they cleared away the counters and the bowlfuls of batter, taking some of the cookies and scones out to the dining table and clearing away the dishes that James had used to cook. They brought out butter dishes, several kettles to make tea in when people started waking up, and glasses and jugs of milk and orange juice.

* * *

It was eight by the time they'd worked their way through several scones and cookies, and two glasses of milk each, talking and laughing all the way through. Footsteps could be heard walking down the stairs as one by one, the other residents of Grimmauld Place roused themselves from sleep.

Harry and Lily greeted Mr Weasley, Lily meeting him properly for the first time, and a strangely placid Mrs Weasley.

"Molly?" said Lily tentatively.

"Yes?" she replied, her tone brittle.

"I just wanted to apologise for the way I said what I did yesterday. It was uncalled for, especially as tempers were high and I've never been able to manage my temper all that well." said Lily.

Mrs Weasley's features softened, although Harry noticed that his mother hadn't apologised for _what_ she'd said, just the way she'd said it.

"It's quite alright dear. You were just defending your friend, and it's an admirable quality, something Harry has inherited as well."

They smiled at each other, and Harry blushed in happy embarrassment.

"Who made these? They're really good!" said Mr Weasley, tasting one of the cookies.

"I'll get the rest of them out." said Lily with a smile. "James decided to bake because he couldn't sleep, and now he's out like a light in the kitchen. Would you like some tea, you two?"

Mrs Weasley opened and closed her mouth, feeling more than a little bit replaced, but managed to nod gratefully.

Mr Weasley cheerily offered to help as the twins and Remus made their way into the kitchen.

By the time Sirius had sat down and had his first cup of tea, Tonks had visited and Mrs Black had screamed herself hoarse, Mrs Weasley had yelled at the twins for dipping Ginny's hair into the milk (choosing not to notice Ginny throwing crumbs at Fred and George in retaliation, because lord, she did not have the patience to deal with three menaces rather than two this early in the morning), and Ron and Hermione had argued their way down the stairs.

"Honestly Ron, why can't you be a morning person!"

"I could be a morning person…if morning happened in the afternoon."

Hermione sputtered in indignation while Harry hid a wide grin behind his third glass of milk as everyone heard his two best friends' conversation.

"Those two," Ginny sniffed, "need to stop acting like a married couple if they want anyone to believe there's nothing going on between them."

"They can't help it Ginny," said Fred.

"I say we lock them in a cupboard and let them sort out that sexual tension." added George, picking out crumbs from his hair.

Harry decided that, actually, he was deeply happy, and that the grin on his face just _wouldn't_ die down. "Nah, they wouldn't avail the opportunity. They'd be too busy blaming and then ignoring each other."

The twin deflated. "True."

Something crashed in the kitchen and Tonks' cries of, "I'm so sorry James, I didn't see you there!" and James' groans permeated the room, melding with the chatter of everyone else and Remus, ever the quiet one, smiled.

Yes, this was definitely home.

* * *

 **Yeah...sorry for the long wait, but I hope the Lily-Harry bonding makes up for it! It's just that I've had a severe case of writer's block for the Harry Potter fandom, and I've been trying to get what's in my head down for such a long time! So, what did you guys think?**

 *** _It takes a truly brave soul to be able to accept their shortcomings and move past it._ You may or may not agree with me, but we can all agree that Ron has ample reason to be jealous of Harry. Harry is popular, accepted (well, until fifth year anyway), smart(er than Ron), much more level headed (and by extension, cooler in comparison), loved (even without trying, he has a great relationship with the headmaster, the gamekeeper _and_ his twin brothers + the Quidditch team, something Ron can only ever aspire to) and talented (at Quidditch and many other things. And Ron really loves Quidditch, doesn't he?)**

 **And yet Ron is still Harry's best friend. Doesn't that say a lot about him?**

 **Because if I had to live with someone most people thought was untouchable, or someone that everyone put on a pedestal, for my own sanity and to not feel like a bad person, I would have gone from best friend to really close acquaintance. Ron doesn't do that. He _overcomes_ that self-depreciation _and_ jealousy, for the most part. And so, in my opinion, even if he's immature and certainly not the best character, he is _very_ brave, and I think a lot of people overlook that kind of bravery. Steadfast friendship with Hermione aside, Harry and Ron's friendship is my favourite, because they had to overcome things to stay friends, whereas with Hermione, she doesn't have that inferiority complex, largely because she's more mature and intelligent than both boys.**

 **I love the dynamics of the Golden Trio, something _so_ many fanfictions overlook, and it really annoys me. Which is the main reason I decided that no bashing was going to be done. _Every_ character has redeeming qualities, whether I think they were stupid or not. To treat them as idiots would be an insult to the Harry Potter Franchise, in my opinion.**

 **Okay, rant over.**

 ****The Marseilles attack actually happened, in real life. Hurray for using actual events for plot progression!**

 **Please let me know what you thought about Lily and Harry's conversation, because I think I messed up on it a little. So many people were looking forward to it, and I genuinely believe I haven't done it justice...oh, and James' oddness is, well, the way he was speaking and the way his mind was running is how my mind does (and how I've observed other people act) when they haven't had any sleep, so...yeah.**

 **Review please?**


End file.
